Letters to the editor 4/1

Social Security

To the Editor,

Nick Stamatakis’ op-ed from March 30 is… Social Security

To the Editor,

Nick Stamatakis’ op-ed from March 30 is right to criticize the “pay-as-you-go” Social Security system, but he’s wrong in his reasoning. The idea of a Social Security trust fund is not a bad idea because it engenders higher government deficits; it’s a bad idea because savings at the national level are ultimately illusory. Caring for today’s retiring Boomers requires today’s labor, not money saved up from years ago. The government, as sovereign issuer of currency, can always print more money to meet its financial obligations. High FICA taxes have only served to rob wealth from the private sector by decreasing the take-home income of workers for the past several decades.

Matt Kosko

School of Arts & Sciences

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Pleasures

To the Editor,

I would like to address the issue of women’s “sex toys,” as discussed by Leah Trimble in her article on March 31, “Give women’s orgasms the respect they deserve.”

There are so many cases around the world of women being abused in the sexual sphere — from inappropriate sexual epithets to physical abuse to rape. The threats of these deplorable acts toward women are prevalent around the world — even in our own country do we see these abuses taking place. Women are looked upon as objects of pleasure. As things to be thrown aside when someone’s done with them. As things to be used. All of these acts and attitudes are injustices which must be fought against.

But I don’t see how women using sex toys is going to do anything but perpetuate the abuses and injustices against them. Why? It will only cause them to look at men as objects of pleasure, as well. Things to be thrown aside when they’re done with them. Things to be used. Because if a woman is using sex toys, mere objects, to “have fun,” then what’s preventing her from using a man, a fellow human being, just for fun as well? And if a woman is using a man, what’s preventing him from using her in the same way?

Women’s use of sex toys does not “celebrate women.” It is not liberating to women, but binding — it binds them in a perpetual cycle of hedonism and objectification in which women and men will only suffer all the more.

Kristin Gottron

Swanson School of Engineering

Member, Anscombe Society