Social Security is dependent on the private sector

Nicholas Von Hoffman's piece decrying the "dice throwers" on Wall Street ("Wrecked by Wall Street," Aug. 3 Forum) undoubtedly struck a nerve. Given the current state of stock prices (falling), home prices (falling) and interest rates (low), investors, homeowners and retirees alike have reason to agree with him. The contrast between the fecklessness of financial markets and steadiness of Social Security couldn't be clearer. We'd be crazy to hitch our retirement wagon to that broken down nag! How could we have ever thought otherwise?

Unfortunately, he has it exactly backward. Because government doesn't produce anything, Social Security is and always has been hooked to the private sector. It remains a reliable source of retirement income only as long as the private sector provides resources sufficient to pay benefits. To continue the equine analogy, picture a watering trough connected to a downspout. In the short run, the horse can drink as long as the trough has water in it. In the long run, the horse can drink only as long as it rains. Social Security works as long as the private sector makes rain. Politicians can promise all they want but can fill the trough only by collecting taxes from producers, borrowing against future production or, more insidiously, debasing the currency.

Our system of private production conjoined to public regulation is the best yet devised by mankind. Government acts to either buffer or exacerbate the cyclical tendencies of the private sector. Good government does as much of the former as necessary, and as little of the latter as possible.

CHARLIE SMITH
Marshall

---

Private polio effort

In the July 30 commentary "America's Unsung Heroes," Douglas J. Amy noted that "we are fortunate to have government scientists working in public health agencies who have virtually eliminated dangerous diseases like polio ... ."

Their efforts are to be lauded, but I hope Mr. Amy's dissertation did not befog the fact that what became known as the Salk polio vaccine was a fully private undertaking financed by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis through its March of Dimes fund raising. In all, the foundation provided $18 million for the research that produced the vaccine and $7.5 million to finance the field trial that proved it works. Not a single cent of taxpayer money was involved.

JOHN TROAN
Scott

The writer is former editor of The Pittsburgh Press. As a medical reporter, he documented the polio vaccine development effort.

---

Danger in the streets

I wish to second the facts of the Aug. 1 letter by Colorado resident Polly Whiteside ("Pedestrians Beware"), who expressed her frustration and, I believe, shock, at not being able to legally traverse the streets of Pittsburgh without being verbally attacked and put into danger by drivers. She stated that means should be effected to remind drivers that "pedestrians and bicyclists deserve to be treated with respect."

I work Downtown and am a cyclist. Ms. Whiteside has hit upon something far greater than a mere traffic issue. She has presented evidence regarding the growing endorsed lack of order not only in Pittsburgh but generally. I see, daily, at least three cars blow through Downtown red lights a full five seconds after the change. How many police stops have I witnessed for those violations? None. If the horns were removed from their vehicles, many Downtown motorists would have their vocabularies cut by one-tenth, minimum. No help at all is the forced stop-and-go of Downtown traffic, one light to the next. Ridiculous, especially in these gas-as-gold times (and, please, no lectures on why the lights can't be green for a street length. Anyone who has ever been to Ocean City, Md., will tell you how wonderful that system is, in practice).

As for bicycles, Pittsburgh has to be one of the worst cycling cities in America. The roads are simply awful, with holes replaced by mounds of asphalt when they are repaired at all and bike paths littered with broken glass.

I am sorry, Ms. Whiteside, that your experience was so bad. Please know that there is more at work than local ignorance.

WILLIAM M. STODDART
Brentwood

---

Big-rig hazards

Regarding the July 27 "Getting Around" column ("Turnpike Emergency: Accident Reveals Ineptness"): I drive the Pennsylvania Turnpike on a regular basis between the Monroeville entrance and Breezewood. I have been trapped many times in tie-ups due to road accidents. I appreciate and agree with Joe Grata's comments. However, he didn't discuss the source of the accident: tractor-trailers.

There is an element within the trucking industry that endangers travelers' lives on a regular basis. On innumerable occasions I have observed rigs, many of them tandems, changing lanes in a split second without the use of turn signals. I wouldn't do this in an automobile let alone a tandem tractor-trailer. I've observed oftentimes the reason for this maneuver is the approach of a grade and the driver doing so appears to want to get from behind another rig so as not to slow down on the grade. However, once on the grade neither truck can gather much speed and the subsequent result is that both lanes are then tied up for the duration of the grade. Hence, they are endangering people's lives for nothing.

Another observation is that many of these large rigs seem to careen down the mountainous sections of the turnpike without any regard for the vehicles around them. They need to slow down.

It's no surprise to me when tractor-trailers are involved in a continuing sequence of serious accidents, many of them with loss of life. All one has to do is drive the turnpike and look around.

PAUL R. POKORSKI
Penn Hills

---

Allegheny circus

Living outside Allegheny County is sometimes more fun than a circus of clowns.

I had to laugh when County Chief Executive Dan Onorato stated that the drink tax was necessary to bail out the mismanaged Port Authority and that he wasn't going to increase property taxes. He even pointed with pride to a pie chart to show that the millage in Allegheny County had not been raised in four years while counties surrounding Allegheny had raised their taxes -- sometimes by as much as 6 percent.

What he didn't mention was that, in spite of those increases by other counties, Allegheny County still has a much higher property tax.

Now he gives his taxpayers a choice between the drink tax or an increase in the property tax. No other options ("Make It a Double: 2 Drink Tax Referenda Likely," Aug. 5). (Do you remember the referendum on the sales tax increase to fund stadiums that was defeated by the taxpayers? But they found the money anyway?)

Perhaps Mr. Onorato should stop the political spin and start to manage his county better before it ends up in the same boat as the Port Authority. This tax would not have been necessary if someone from the county had been doing his or her job and had been auditing the management of the Port Authority in the first place.

Of course, if I lived in Allegheny County it wouldn't be so funny.

RICHARD HART
Nottingham

---

Population growth is what's really killing the planet

Looking for alternative fuels is a good idea, but it's not going to stop global warming. Our problem is not the fuels we use; our problem is the number of people using those fuels. Planet Earth already has more people than it can support, and the population increases every second. The human race is procreating itself into extinction, and ruining the planet in the process.

We need to put the most brilliant minds on the planet to work on figuring out moral, ethical, humane and voluntary (voluntary in order to eliminate any attempts toward genocide) ways to reduce the birth rate. But that can't happen. The misguided special interests that believe they need steady population growth to maintain power always manage to lower the boom on anybody foolhardy enough to raise the subject. So we have this 800-pound gorilla in the middle of the room, jumping up and down, screaming for our attention, and we are all so scared of being yelled at that we pretend we can't see him.

So it's up to us. We have to start creating an atmosphere in which it is safe for people to start working at reducing the birth rate. We have to let them know that we want them to work on it. We have to create an environment in which there's enough public support to make it possible.

When we start, one of the biggest obstacles we face will be well-intentioned people who assure us that it is blasphemous to raise this issue because "God will provide." Such people need to go back to the Bible and consider the horrors of the deluge, which only Noah and his family, out of the total population of the Earth, survived. More and more, the story of Noah and his ark is not history, but prophecy. Unless, that is, we get to work.

PAUL A. ALTER
Wilkinsburg

---

We welcome your letters. Please include your name, address and phone number, and send to Letters to the Editor, 34 Blvd. of the Allies, Pittsburgh 15222. E-mail letters to letters@post-gazette.com or fax to 412-263-2014. Letters should be 250 words or less, original and exclusive to the Post-Gazette. All letters are subject to editing for length, clarity and accuracy and will be verified before being published.