Reading Comprehension Entitlement Myths by Michael Kinsley
The Peter G. Peterson foundation, a new and welcome arrival on the national scold scene, announced in a December press release that the U.S. is bankrupt. Not the government but the whole country and everyone in it. As of Sept. 30, the PGP folks reported (using figures from the Federal Reserve), the value of everybody's assets was $ 56. 5 trillion. The value of our liabilities (public and private) was $ 56. 4 trillion. Given what has happened to real estate and the stock market since Sept. 30, it seems certain that we now owe more than we are worth.
It seems certain, that is, if the PGP folks are correct. Now, I'm all for doom 'n' gloom—they've done very well for me in the journalism business over the years—but this struck me as too bad to be true. And on closer examination, it is. About $ 40 trillion of PGP's $ 56 trillion in liabilities is its calculation of future Medicare and Social Security benefits ($ 34 trillion of it is Medicare alone), which Congress has promised to future senior citizens but has made no provision to pay for. This is the entitlements nightmare we hear so much about. Trouble is, the PGP folks seem to have forgotten about this $ 40 trillion of dubious promises when totting up the assets of people who will (or possibly won't) get the benefits. If these entitlement promises are real government debts, they are also real assets for the people who will enjoy them. If (as we gloomsters suspect) they aren't real for the future recipients, then they aren't real for the government either.
American families may have borrowed irresponsibly, and may have elected politicians who borrow even more irresponsibly on their behalf, but the typical American family is not bankrupt. The average couple age 65-74 has accumulated a net worth (not counting entitlement promises as either assets or liabilities) of $ 691,000, according to the Federal Reserve in 2004. Shortly thereafter, of course, they start to die in large numbers. And what happens to the $ 691,0007 Generally it goes to the children and grandchildren.
It's often said, on the subject of underfunded entitlements, that we are "robbing future generations." This is not completely true. You can't literally steal, say, a vacation home from the year 2050 and plant it next to a beautiful lake in 2009. Nor can you beg, borrow or steal money in 2050 and spend it in 2009. But you can reduce your savings rate in 2009, spend the money instead and leave a less prosperous country in 2050. And if you borrow money from foreigners in 2009, as we have been doing more and more, they can indeed come knocking in 2050 and demand their money back. With interest.
Meanwhile, though, families—middle-class families, not just rich ones—are passing hundreds of thousands of dollars on to the next generation in their wills. Fair enough, if they worked for the money and saved it. In fact, wonderful. But much of this generosity, it turns out, is made possible by Social Security and Medicare. How much? Hard to say. What is easier to say with certainty is that most people today and in the future will get more back from these entitlement programs in retirement than they put in during their working lives.
Medicare and Social Security are supposed to be insurance against the perils of old age: poverty and illness. They are not supposed to be gifts or subsidies to the children of retirees. Yet that is what, in large part, they have become. The reason for insurance is that you can't predict the future. If an elderly woman has diabetes and her husband needs heart surgery, then dies anyway, leaving her impoverished, Medicare and Social Security should be there for her. And if it all costs far more than she ever put into the system, that's O. K. too.
But if our elderly woman dies with $ 691,000 in the bank, it's evident that she didn't need the government money to pay for her health care or to avoid plunging into poverty. She wasn't lying or cheating—she might have been legitimately worried—but her worries turned out to be unnecessary. And society, having kept its promise to her, should get at least part of that money back. Oh, yes, designing a system to achieve this would be a nightmare—maybe impossible. The incentive for old folks to squander their savings would be enormous. Maybe it can't work. But the point is worth keeping in mind as we enter President Obama's "new age" of "hard choices." And the children? Let them rob their own children, just as their parents did. (Time, February 9, 2009) Sexual Reproduction
Birds do it. Bees do it. But dandelions don't. The prodigious spread of these winsome weeds underscores a little-appreciated biological fact. Contrary to human experience, sex is not essential to reproduction. Asexual organisms can often churn out multiple generations of clones, gaining a distinct edge in the evolutionary numbers game. And therein lies the puzzle: If sex is such an inefficient way to reproduce, why is it so widespread?
Sex almost certainly originated nearly 3.5 billion years ago as a mechanism for repairing the DNA of bacteria. Because ancient earth was such a violent place, the genes of these unicellular organisms would have been frequently damaged by intense heat and ultraviolet radiation. "Conjugation"—the intricate process in which one bacterium infuses genetic material into another—provided an ingenious, if cumbersome, solution to this problem, although bacteria continued to rely on asexual reproduction to increase their numbers.
Animal sex, however, is a more recent invention. Biologist Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst believes the evolutionary roots of egg and sperm cells can be traced back to a group of organisms known as rotests that first appeared some 1.5 billion years ago. (Modern examples include protozoa, giant kelp and malaria parasite.) During periods of starvation, Margulis conjectures, one rotest was driven to devour another. Sometimes this cannibalistic meal was incompletely digested, and the nuclei of prey and predator fused. By joining forces, the fused cells were better able to survive adversity, and because they survived, their penchant for union was passed on to their distant descendants.
From this vantage point, human sexuality seems little more than a wondrous accident, born of a kind of original sin among protozoa. Most population biologists, however, believe sex was maintained over evolutionary time because it somehow enhanced survival. The mixing and matching of parental genes, they argue, provide organisms with a novel mechanism for generating genetically different offspring, thereby increasing the odds that their progeny could exploit new niches in a changing environment and, by virtue of their diversity, have a better chance of surviving the assaults of bacteria and other tiny germs that rapidly evolve tricks for eluding their hosts' defenses. At the beginning of the twentieth century, North American society held, as an ideal，the Nuclear Family. This presumably perfect residential, social, and economic unit consisted of an adult male, an adult female and their minor children. This structure was thought to be stable and long lasting.
However, a few decades later, the structure of that ideal family was being altered radically even while it was being touted as the structure to be aimed for. Popular magazines bemoaned the loss of the Nuclear Family and its replacement with inferior forms.
There are a number of factors that are acting in concert to apply pressure on the Nuclear Family and generate a variety of new structures. Some of these are:
The definition of marriage has changed somewhat in that few people now consider it to last "until death do us part". The concept of monogamy (the marriage of one man and one woman) has been modified to a form now referred to as serial monogamy (the marriage of one man and one woman at a time). This reflects the increasing equality of women and men in terms of economic advantage and the recognition that many women no longer depend on men for their survival. Women are acquiring independence and have become empowered to make their own choices. With this independence, the need to form a relationship with a man becomes less important. This change embodies the concept that the marriage is temporary and can be terminated by either partner at any time. Associated with this, of course, is the relaxation of the divorce laws and the significant reduction of the shame that had one time been attached to divorce
The economy of North America has resulted in a two-tier system of a few rich who control most of the resources and a large portion of the population who control almost none of the resources. Because of this, many couples are forced to have both partners with full-time jobs outside the home. There are unintended byproducts of the need for a double income. The most important of these is the replacement of a mother-oriented socialization of children to a "stranger-oriented" socialization system reflected in the growth of the childcare industry. Also, either partner is financially able to end the marriage without significant hardship.
The combination of these changes will in the coming decades have a profound effect on the structure of the family of North America. As a result, the family will be a fluid, constantly changing structure with variable household arrangements as the norm. Celebrate. Celebrate. Physicians are delighted with a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel's recommendation earlier this year that Vioxx and its cousins Bextra and Celebrex (all medicines known as Cox-2 inhibitors) should remain on the market, despite evidence they increase heart disease risk in some people. The panelists reached their decision after weighing all the data and concluding the benefits of these pain-relieving drugs outweighed the risks.
Specifically, these scientists acknowledged that, for some patients, these prescription drugs were uniquely effective in reducing pain from arthritis and other causes. For others—concerned about ulcers associated with aspirin and other OTC analgesics—the Cox-2 inhibitors offered the advantage of minimizing potentially serious effects of stomach irritation.
Now is an appropriate time for everyone to take a fresh look at the benefit-risk equation for Vioxx and the other Cox-2 inhibitors.
The risks—increased risk of heart disease in some who use the drugs—have been well publicized. Much less publicity has been given to a spectrum of real and potential benefits that go way beyond reduced risk of stomach irritation. These little-discussed benefits would have been lost, perhaps permanently—had Vioxx, Bextra and Celebrex been driven from shelves in pursuit of perfect safety, an unattainable goal.
For example, there is substantial evidence Cox-2 inhibitors can reduce development of colon polyps, which may become colon canceL Indeed. Celebrex is FDA-approved for those genetically prone to colon cancer. Ironically, the 2004 study that revealed the elevated heart attack risk of Vioxx was primarily designed to further establish the drug's effectiveness in protecting against colon cancer. And while the results of that interrupted trial have not yet been published, there is good reason to believe they will confirm the protective effects against colon cancer established in research over the last 10 years.
At the time of its withdrawal from the market last fall, studies of Vioxx as well as the other Cox-2 drugs suggest that they had other anti-cancer properties as well, possibly reducing the risk of malignancies of a number of sites, including the lung and esophagus.
Had these drugs been dismissed, their untapped promise for prevention would have evaporated well before it was evaluated and applied to save lives. Fortunately, cooler and wiser heads prevailed. 
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