Sometimes you just can't help but worry about the future. One day you spot a gray hair on your head, the next day an AARP membership application arrives in the mail. One thing it doesn't do any good to worry about, however, is Social Security. If you believe what financial wizards like Newt Gingrich say, Social Security will have dried up and blown away by the time most of us are ready for it. Between one Senator's pork barrel and another's legal-defense fund, Congress has surreptitiously siphoned Social Security for all it's worth.
Still, by cutting costs here and there, the government hopes to squeeze a few more years out of the Social Security kitty. If the recently proposed HR 1698 Mandatory Electronic Funds Transfer Expansion Act of 1995, sponsored by Congressman Jim Lightfoot (R-Iowa), becomes law, anyone filing for Social Security (or any government benefits, for that matter) would be required to use electronic fund transfers to move money from the U.S. Treasury to their local bank. The upside of this proposal is big--really big--savings in money, maybe as much as $175 million a year. The Treasury currently issues about 850 million payments a year, 580 million of them to Social Security recipients. Printing and mailing checks for surface-mail delivery costs from 39 to 43 cents each; doing the same thing electronically only costs about 1.1 cents per check. The bill would require recipients who currently have a bank account to start receiving electronic funds early next year. Everyone would have to accept electronic funds by 2001.
There are indirect benefits from the changeover, as well. One of the biggest headaches for both the Feds and recipients involves lost or stolen checks. For every 380 checks the Social Security Administration currently mails out, one person claims never to receive it. With direct deposits, that number falls to one out of every 7700 transactions.
Of course, taxpayers won't be the only beneficiaries of government-mandated electronic fund transfers. Banks see proposals such as Lightfoot's as a windfall--and there's the rub. Banks aren't exactly user friendly, as evidenced by the First National Bank of Chicago's recent attempt to extort $3.00 from its customers for the privilege of talking to a human teller. Likewise, charges for basic bank services are skyrocketing at an alarming rate--$1.50 for an ATM account-balance inquiry, for instance. Government officials are admittedly concerned about banks gouging customers who are required to establish bank accounts. (With all these digital dollar signs floating around, it's no wonder Microsoft wanted Intuit in the fold.)
As an aside: In the kind of wisdom we've come to expect from Capitol Hill, Congress has also come up with another way of saving senior-citizen-related money--cutting off federal funds to groups that criticize Congressional efforts, such as the National Council of Senior Citizens. A proposal sponsored by Congressman David McIntosh (R-Indiana) would prohibit lobbying by any group that receives federal grants, but not by deep-pocket suppliers who feed congressional reelection coffers.
Social Security is moving forward electronically in other areas: All (or at least most) forms required by the Social Security Administration are available in both .PDF (Adobe Acrobat) or PostScript format at the Administration's Web site (http://www.ssa.gov).
And speaking of the future, we're happy to present the Dr. Dobb's Journal 1996 editorial calendar. As you can see, the calendar includes both familiar topics and emerging subjects that deserve examination. Among the topics we'll be paying particular attention to in the coming year are programming for Windows 95, the PowerPC, and the World Wide Web. We'll also be looking at visual programming, games development, and intelligent software. In short, from design to implementation, Dr. Dobb's Journal will be looking at anything--and everything--that's important to the art and science of computer programming.
If you have an article to share with your fellow programmers, give us a call or drop a line; phone 415-655-4178 or send e-mail to editors@ddj.com or 76704.50@compuserve.com. DDJ author guidelines are available at both our Web and ftp sites (http://www.ddj.com and ftp.mv.com in the /pub/ddj directory, respectively). We'll also be happy to fax, e-mail, or surface mail a copy directly to you. Remember that DDJ comes out about a month prior to its cover date (some of you may actually be reading the October issue at the end of August), so plan accordingly if you are targeting a specific issue.
After investing the time, trouble, and money to get an advanced university degree, grads usually expect, at minimum, a good job and a solid future. Computer science and engineering grads, in particular, have always been in high demand. Unfortunately, says Stanford University professor William Massey, this trend is changing.
In a recent $250,000 study (which involved more than 200 universities and 1000 employers), Massey discovered that the U.S. is producing more technical PhDs than the job market can absorb. In computer science, for example, only 50 percent of new doctorates are finding jobs that require a PhD. This isn't to say that advanced-degree holders are standing in unemployment lines, but that the jobs they find (and there seem to be a lot of them) don't require a doctorate.
January Encoding: Encryption, Compression, and Error Correction February Data Communications and Internet Development March Little Languages April Algorithms May Operating Systems June Patterns and Software Design July Graphics Programming August C/C++ Programming September User Interfaces October Object-Oriented Programming November Client/Server Development December Portability and Cross-Platform Development
Jonathan Erickson
editor-in-chief
Copyright © 1995, Dr. Dobb's Journal