天要塌了，天要塌了
在英语国家，“小鸡利特”是最有名的幼儿故事之一，说的是有一天，一样东西（有的版本说是个小石子，也有的说是个橡树果）掉在了小鸡利特的头上，她（或他）就认定天要塌下来了，于是急急忙忙在伙伴中散布恐慌，伙伴们信以为真，以为末日就在眼前了。但最终，这些歇斯底里的禽类们总算都恢复了理智。
那么在戴维•霍尔西的这幅漫画中，打扮成小鸡利特的那个人在做什么呢？对于这位一身“鸡装”的恐慌散布者来说，要塌下来的不是天而是美国社会保障体系，即政府的社会保险计划，该计划向美国全体劳动者及其配偶提供他们所获得的基本养老金。美国职工都交社会保障税，税金被存放到一个特别基金账户，该基金按说是为支付养老金而储备的。
事实上，美国人工作一辈子所交的社会保障税并不够联邦退休金计划的支出。（职工们最早可在62岁时领取养老金，不过大多数人会等到65岁，而即使从65岁算起，人们的平均寿命还会有15年。）因此，社会保障体系实际依赖的是那些在数量上超过退休人员的在职纳税人。早在社会保障体系刚建立起来的20世纪30年代，情况即是如此。那时不仅在职人员远远多于退休人员，人们的平均寿命也比现在短得多。但如今情况不同了：美国和其他许多国家一样，低生育率伴随着低死亡率将导致社会保障体系在未来数年后面临财政困难。
人们对此提出了一些解决方案，其中包括：提高社会保障税，推迟领取养老金的起始年龄（比如68或70岁，不再是65岁），减少退休金数额。所有提议中最具争议、也最让布什总统中意的是在这一体系中实行部分私有化：布什提议，允许较为年轻的职工把他们应交的社会保障税存入特别账户，这个账户上的资金可用于股票及债券投资。
评论家们指出，社会保障的一个目的恰恰就是为每个职工提供没有风险的安全保障，而这是股票市场根本提供不了的。但是，共和党中有对联邦政府深为厌恶、对罗斯福和杜鲁门任总统时制定的中央“社会主义”政策怀有特别敌意的人，霍尔西暗示，这些“反政府狂人”一直在忙于渲染社会保障体系所受到的威胁和解决问题的难度。他们的策略是：在不知详情的选民中引起恐慌，让他们把私有化当作“挽救”社会保障体系的唯一出路而悲观地接受下来。
"Chicken Little" is one of the most famous tales for small children in the English-speaking world. One day an object -- usually a pebble or an acorn -- falls on Chicken Little's head. She (or he) concludes that the sky is falling and rushes about spreading panic among various associates, who are persuaded that the end is nigh. Eventually the hysterical birds all return to their senses.
So what is someone dressed as Chicken Little doing in today's cartoon by David Horsey? For this chicken-suited sower of panic, it's not the sky that is collapsing but the social security system, the government social insurance scheme that provides the basic pension earned by all working Americans and their spouses. US workers pay a social security tax that goes into a special fund supposedly reserved for pension payments.
Actually, in the course of a working lifetime workers do not pay enough into the system to cover all the costs of a federal retirement pension. (Workers can draw a pension as early as age 62, though most wait till 65, and even then will on average survive for about 15 years.) Instead the system depends on active tax-paying workers outnumbering retired workers. Back when social security was instituted in the 1930s, this was clearly the case. Not only were there many more active workers relative to pensioners, but average lifespans were considerably shorter than now. But today's situation is different: in America as in many other countries, low birth rates coupled with low death rates will lead to financial difficulties for the social security system in future years.
A number of remedies have been proposed, among them higher social security taxes, a later age of eligibility (68 or 70 instead of 65) and reduction of benefits. Most controversial of all is President Bush's favorite: partial privatization. Bush is proposing that younger workers be allowed to put their social security contributions into special accounts that could be used to invest in stocks and bonds.
Critics point out that one of the points of social security is precisely that: securityfromriskfor every working person, hardly what②the stock market offers. But the Republican Party includes people with a deep loathing of the federal government and a particular animus against the centralizing "socialist" policies put in place during the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. David Horsey is suggesting that these "anti-government zealots" have been busy exaggerating both the threats to the social security system and the difficulty of fixing the problems. Their strategy: to panic poorly informed voters into a pessimistic acceptance of privatization as the only way to "save" social security.
（编辑:youke）
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