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Americans' trust in other Americans has been on the decline for decades. Their trust in American institutions such as business and religion is, although sometimes wavering, more resilient. Can our trust in institutions help repair our trust in each other?

"Trust and Trustworthiness represents the culmination of important new research into the roles of trust in our society; it offers a challenging new voice in the current discourse about the origins of cooperative behavior and its consequences for social and civic life."--Jacket.

 The Columbia Journalism Review recently published a long article by Jeff Gerth on media coverage of Donald Trump.  In the introductory section, Gerth says: "Before the 2016 election, most Americans trusted the traditional media and the trend was positive, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer. ...Today, the US media has the lowest credibility—26 percent—among forty-six nations, according to a 2022 study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism."  Confidence in the media has been in general decline for decades, according to the data I've seen, so the first sentence surprised me.   I checked the Edelman Trust Barometer and noticed that they have continued to survey trust, so you can look at how trust has changed since 2016.  The following figure shows trust in the media in 2016 and 2023 for nations in which both are available:Trust in the media fell from 47% to 43% in the United States over the period.  Among all 25 nations in the sample, average trust fell from 49.3% to 46.9%.  So the US was a little below average at both times.  As far as change, the United States had a decline of 4%, which was not unusual--the mean change was a decline of 2.4%.  As far as the "positive trend" in 2016, the report says that trust in the media was higher than it had been in 2015.  The Edelman Trust Barometer apparently goes back to 2001, but there doesn't seem to be a convenient place to look up the data, so I didn't pursue that.  The main point is that it doesn't suggest that the American media suffered a particularly large decline in trust after 2016.  Now for the Reuters study (the Digital News Report):  the United States did rank lowest, at 26%.  The Reuters data go back to 2016, so they can also be used to measure change.   A figure showing trust in 2016 (or the earliest year available) and 2022:The United States has fallen in both absolute and relative terms, but the change wasn't that large--a decline of 6, when the average change was a decline of 2.5.    The samples are different, but about 20 nations appear in both.  Neither the scores nor the changes in the scores are highly correlated (the correlations are a little less than 0.2).  Perhaps that's because of a difference in the questions:  Edelman asks whether you trust the institution to "do what is right," while Reuters asks if they think you can "trust most news most of the time."  But both give the same conclusion about whether there's been a decline in trust in the American media:  some, but not an unusually large amount.  The comparison in the Gerth article is misleading--it treats the difference between two different questions as a change over time.  Although the article was mostly an examination of media coverage rather than an analysis of public opinion, the passage I quoted was featured prominently and clearly pointed to a conclusion--that flaws in the coverage of Trump had produced a decline in public trust.  But regardless of what you think about the quality of coverage, it apparently didn't have much overall effect.  That may be because of political polarization--anything that made supporters of Trump feel more negative about the media made opponents feel more positive, and vice-versa. 

The article explores some of the assumptions behind the current valence of the notion of trust and in particular its entanglement in discourses of social robustness, the management and reporting of (corporate) knowledge, and its underlying culture and systems of responsibility. It unfolds by contrasting classic and contemporary anthropological work on cultures of suspicion, culpability and spiritual ambiguity with the new vocabulary of capitalist corporate ethics. Finally, the argument examines the work that relationships do when moving in and out of the occult, and contrasts it with the kind of temporal work that capitalism demands from relationships to remain diaphanous. If public trust functions as the political epistemology of neoliberal society, an anthropological theory of trust ought perhaps to reaffirm instead our trust in anthropological theory and comparison. ; Peer reviewed

Healthcare service is a highly trusted field but necessitates a trust relationship with service users. In this field, medical social workers are crucial service providers. In this study, exploratory research was conducted to investigate the meaning of trust from the perspective of medical social workers in Taiwan. The findings are presented as follows: (a) relationship-based trust, (b) trust in the medical system and (c) the potential role for trust and anti-oppressive practices. According to the research results a conclusion was deduced and practical recommendations are proposed.

The Social Security Trust fund is set to run out in a few years. Who cares? Is the total US Federal debt $31,456,554,630,496.28, including Treasury debt held by the Social Security trust fund and other agencies?  or is it "only" $24,629,050,125,670.81 held by the public? (Source.)I've been mulling these questions over, prodded by conversations with some colleagues. The "trust fund" exists because for a while, Social Security taxes were larger than Social Security payments. Social Security used the extras to buy Treasury debt. Now there are fewer workers, more retirees and more generous benefits, so Social Security taxes are smaller than payments. Social Security sells off its "trust fund." And it seems we're in trouble when the "trust fund" runs out.  But that's not how it works at all. Treasury debt is not an asset like a stock or bond, or Uncle Scrooge's pool of gold coins. Treasury debt is a claim against future income taxes. Cashing in Treasury debt just  means paying for benefits with income taxes. The ups and downs of the trust fund just reflect a change in how we finance spending. While payroll taxes > social security spending, which was the case until 2007, then payroll taxes are financing other spending. When payroll taxes < social security spending, then income taxes or increases in debt are financing social security spending, which (graph below) was the case after 2008.* The trust fund just adds up this change over time. But exhausting the trust fund is, in this view, really irrelevant. source: CBOThat doesn't mean we can all go to sleep, for two reasons. First, when payroll taxes < Social Security outlays, and the trust fund is winding down, then income taxes or additional public debt must finance the shortfall. The government has to spend less on other things, raise income tax receipts, or borrow which means raising future taxes. And, per the graph, the numbers are not small. 1% of GDP is $230 billion. The extra strain on income taxes, other spending, or debt, happens right now, when the trust fund is positive but decreasing. Zero matters only because by law,  when the trust fund goes to zero, Social Security payments must be automatically cut to match Social Security taxes. That's the sudden drop in the graph. The program was set up as if  the trust fund were buying stocks and bonds, real assets, and would not lay claim on income tax revenues. But it was not; social security taxes were used to cover other spending, and now income taxes must start to pay social security benefits. What happens when the trust fund runs out, then?  Congress has a choice: automatically cut benefits, as shown, or change the law so that the government can pay Social Security benefits from income taxes, or, more realistically, by issuing ever more debt, until the bond vigilantes come. (Or raise payroll taxes, or reform the whole mess.) I bet on change the law. So what's the right measure of debt? It's conventional to look only at debt in public hands. But there is a case to look at the total debt, i.e. including the trust funds. Those are the total claims against the income  tax. Looking at it this way, however, one could also go on and count unfunded future social security benefits as a debt -- the present value of the difference between the two lines above, which leads to immense numbers, per Larry Kotlikoff. I have usually not considered the present value of unfunded promises as "debt," because Congress can change the payments at any time. Changing debt repayment to the public is a default, with financial and legal consequences; changing social security benefits is legislation. You can't sell your future social security benefits as you can sell your treasury debt. The trust fund is half way on this scale. What would be the consequence of a haircut or rescheduling of trust fund debt? Would that trigger something like cross-default clauses in corporate debt? I don't know. The event is unlikely anyway. The left pocket defaulting on the right pocket doesn't help pay the bills. The trust fund is certainly unlikely to run, and its debt is not used as collateral in financial transactions. As a somewhat meaningless accounting identity, it's a lot less "debt" than the debt in public hands. I think this all goes to remind us that paying off the existing debt is not the US central fiscal problem. The central problem is vast unfunded future promises. Defaulting or inflating away current debt does nothing to fund those promises. I look forward to comments on this one, especialy if there are standard views on these apparently simple questions that I'm not aware of. *In the end,  payroll taxes + income & other taxes + increase in public debt = Social Security spending + other spending. The trust fund nets out.