Social Security

False Consciousness and Crisis

John Attarian

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351489607
• Subtopic: Public Finance
• Index: Politics & International Relations

One of today's most important national concerns is the projected bankruptcy of Social Security some time in the next few decades and its consequent inability to pay full benefits on time. Yet despite two decades of warnings about this, nothing is being done. The saying that Social Security is the third rail of American politics - touch it and you die - still holds true. In Social Security: False Consciousness and Crisis, John Attarian argues that the major cause of the current impasse is the misleading manner in which the program has been depicted to the public and the beliefs about Social Security which prevail as a result.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half title
• title
• copy
• dedication
• ack
• preface
• glossary
• Preface
• Part 1 Social Security’s Threefold Crisis
• 1 The Bankruptcy Crisis
• 2 The Affordability Crisis
• 3 The Crisis of Confidence
• Part 2 False Consciousness and the Roots of Crisis
• 4 The Beginnings
• 5 Helvering v. Davis
• 6 Forging a False Consciousness
• 7 The Curtis Hearings and the Insurance Controversy
• 8 Flemming v. Nestor, the Amish, and the Power of the Word
• 9 Shoring Up the False Consciousness
• 10 Fruits of the False Consciousness: Drift, Evasion, Denial, Paralysis
• Part 3 What Now?
• 11 A Critical Survey of Social Security Reform
• 12 A Modest Proposal