Letters to the Editor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
‘Clinton in Taiwan’
As an economically conservative Republican, I would like to express a rare, but strongly felt, disagreement with a recent New York Sun editorial. “Clinton in Taiwan” [Editorial, February 28, 2005] reads like a throwback to the 1950s with your imprecations of the People’s Republic of China as “Red China” and “communist China,” and its view of China about as current as it was in Mao’s primacy, as all-around lefty bad guys.
In fact, China is an economic engine powered by free-market principles, with billions of dollars of capitalist investment pouring in and being allocated by profit motives, with many Chinese millionaires and many Chinese entrepreneurs seeking to become millionaires, with hustle and with smarts, and with the bastions of American capitalism lusting after its growing middle-class and upper-class markets.
To use the same descriptions for such an economic environment as was used during the Truman administration is either dated or dogmatic or both. As a matter of fact, China has for several years had far more stockholders as citizens than members of the Communist Party. On this issue, President Clinton may be “to the right” of President Bush but he is also to the wrong of him.
ELLIOT MILLER
Ridgefield, Conn.
Social Security Revisited
Re: “The Democrats and Social Security,” Editorial, February 28, 2005. It would have been easier for elected officials to say that there is nothing in the American Constitution that allows a program such as Social Security. However, it is going to take a lot of courage from many to reform a program that many of those in office made worse over the years.
The spark of courage has begun from President Bush. To understand the economics of Social Security is to understand that it is not a savings and investment plan, or a system of ownership. Social Security is not a wealth creator. We never seem to learn the lessons of the past. Of how socialist societies impoverish their citizens – the slow encroachment of government that takes from its citizens.
Individuals should decide how and what they want to do with their own money. Thank you.
GEORGE E. BARTHEL JR.
Alpharetta, Ga.
Rarely, even on the editorial pages of the New York Times, have I read such a specious argument as that made by Robert J. Samuelson concerning President Bush’s plans to finance private Social Security accounts [Opinion, February 16, 2005].
With a dramatic headline “Spare Us the Truth” and an introduction that purports to explain why a 1960 Supreme Court case is fatal to the argument in favor of such accounts, Mr. Samuelson’s sole point, occupying three op-ed half columns, is that Social Security benefits are not a legal obligation of the federal government immune to congressional tinkering.
No adult I have heard in 50 years of discussion has ever said they were; what all intelligent people, Republican or Democrat, understand is that as a practical matter Social Security benefits might as well be such obligations as no Congress has the stomach to repeal them – the result being that it is realistic to expect that such benefits, at the current level, will continue to be paid out for many, many years and to factor such payments into future financial expectations. Why is this simple understanding beyond Mr. Samuelson’s intelligence?
ROBERT L. POSTER
Manhattan
‘The Results Are In’
In his report on the Iraqi elections [“The Results Are In,” Opinion, February 17,2005] Nibras Kazimi writes that the rules governing the election “stipulated that no less than 25% of the seats in the new parliament should be reserved for women.”
I wonder if The New York Sun editorial page would look kindly on any American state or locality that imposed a similar quota for women, blacks, Hispanics, gays, etc.?
JERRY SKURNIK
Manhattan
‘The American Talmud’
Re: “The American Talmud,” Editorial, February 28, 2005. Yes! Yes! Yes! The editorial was beautiful. No one could have said it better. May this country always remain “a home where scholarship and religious practice can flourish in freedom,” and may The New York Sun keep on reminding everyone of it.
LARRY LEVINE
Kew Gardens Hills, N.Y.
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