Krugman's death panels

On ABC's This Week 10-14-2010, Paul Krugman said: "Some years down the pike, we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes. It's going to be that we're actually going to take Medicare under control, and we're going to have to get some additional revenue, probably from a VAT. But it's not going to happen now."

Somebody does have to decide which things Medicare will pay for. So in that sense he is right, but his timing might be a bit off and it is not just a question of timing. There is also the issue of labeling.

Someone should mention to the Nobel Laureate how much more successful the reproductive rights advocates were once they escaped from the "Pro-abortion" label. Perhaps they could also mention how much better it has worked out for gay rights groups since they dropped the language of "sexual preference" in favor of "sexual orientation".

Perhaps the left should not accept the right's "death panels" label.
Maybe they should think of another name.
How about: Quality of Life Commissions or just "Life Panels," but "pro-choice" is already taken.
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David and Michael

Welcome to the conversation.

10 centuries in 5 minutes

I reveal my total geek nature by saying that I have been waiting a long time for videos like this one.

It needs dates and something like this should be made for the whole world.
With stopping and drilling down etc.

It is delightful. Bye I have to go and watch it again.

added Nov 19: They had to take it down becuae of copyright infringement.

Centennia software has a better version but of course it cost money.

The Founders

Only a fool would disagree with a Supreme Court Justice about the Constitution.
As Will Durant once said in a similar situation: we proceed.
Elena Kagan’s confirmation brought up a lot of discussion of one of her mentors, Justice Thurgood Marshall. On the occasion of the bicentennial of the Constitution, Justice Marshall gave a speech which contains several ideas that I have heard from my liberal friends over the years.
The New York Times selected this as a summary of his remarks. ''I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever 'fixed' at the Philadelphia Convention,'' the 78-year-old Justice said. ''Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight and sense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today.''
This seems to me to be a bit like criticizing Isaac Newton because he wasn’t Albert Einstein. Newton said, and I’m sure Einstein agreed, “if I have seen further than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” Marshall seems be of the opinion that he sees further than others and it is because they were too short.
I can certainly understand that American History would look different to a black person than it does to me. But I think that Justice Marshall constructed a pretty weak straw man when he set out to prove that the constitution that they wrote in 1787 was not perfect.
Marshall is correct that it was “defective from the start.” Did they claim that it was free of defects? Well, let’s see, did they include a process for amending it? Yes, and it has been used twenty seven times – so far. Clearly they never intended that the meaning of the constitution should be “forever ‘fixed’ at the Philadelphia Convention.”
Apparently Justice Marshall thinks that their great crime was allowing the continuation of slavery. It seems to me that a legitimate criticism should include an alternate pathway that would have gotten us here quicker or with less pain. He doesn’t actually propose how they might have done it otherwise. But like a lot of other people he seems to think that the founders chose between having the Constitution that they made and having another one which abolished slavery. But that wasn’t their choice. Their choice was between having the Constitution they made - which included structures that led to the abolition of slavery “four score and seven” years later - and NOT HAVING the imaginary one that abolished slavery immediately.
He goes on for a long time about how inadequate their work was. They left slavery in place, no vote for women, … and he says that, “While the Union survived the civil war, the Constitution did not. In its place arose a new, more promising basis for justice and equality, the 14th Amendment, ensuring protection of the life, liberty, and property of all persons against deprivations without due process, and guaranteeing equal protection of the laws.”
Justice Marshall saw the 14th amendment as replacing the Constitution. I see it as part of the continuing development of the Constitution. Certainly the 1787 document did not put in place what we have now. Nothing could have then. The 14th amendment is a very good thing, but by its very nature it is a modification of, not a replacement for, the Constitution.
I am unabashedly impressed with the founders. I do not think that my appreciation of them justifies the epithet I once received from a liberal friend that “I was always kissing their …”. But I do think that they produced a really fine piece of work. (I realize that that is not a very risky position to take.) I see the Constitution as the instrument which gave form to the nation and, among other things, held it together long enough to allow it to develop those “mystic chords of memory” that Lincoln called on to win the civil war and abolish slavery.

the new capitalism

(This is a previous post renamed.) So the Cold War was over and democratic capitalism defeated communism (=1 party dictatorship +socialism).  All the world (almost) is clamoring into developing capitalism.  Is there any reason to believe that our version of capitalism will continue to be dominant or even successful in this new world?  I hear a lot about China not playing by the rules (trade and environmental) and a new state capitalism.  I'll bet the Chinese believe that they have just as much right as anyone else to write the rules.  Remember, there is no referee.

fighting words

I just got another of those emails from an Obama person telling me about how much they had been FIGHTING for me. Obama also made a reference in the recent campaign to some ethnic group recognizing who their ENEMIES were and voting accordingly. (that one is also borderline racist) I hear it from the other side, too.

They all need to stifle that imagery when talking about domestic affairs. You fight against your enemies. You work against your opponents.

The arrogance of the assumption that if someone disagrees with you, then it must be because they are out to destroy the Republic is just insufferable.

Did we not learn anything from Nixon?

Ode to America

by Cornel Nistorescu, Roumanian Newspaper editor, post 911 editorial

Why are Americans so united? They don't resemble one another even if you paint them! They speak all the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations. Some of them are nearly extinct, others are incompatible with one another, and in matters of religious beliefs, not even God can count how many they are. Still, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into a hand put on the heart. Nobody rushed to accuse the White House, the army, the secret services that they are only a bunch of losers. Nobody rushed to empty their bank accounts. Nobody rushed on the streets nearby to gape about. The Americans volunteered to donate blood and to give a helping hand. After the first moments of panic, they raised the flag on the smoking ruins, putting on T-shirts, caps and ties in the colours of the national flag. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in every place and on every car a minister or the president was passing. On every occasion they started singing their traditional song: "God Bless America!".
Silent as a rock, I watched the charity concert broadcast on Saturday once, twice, three times, on different tv channels. There were Clint Eastwood, Willie Nelson, Robert de Niro, Julia Roberts, Cassius Clay, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Springsteen, Silvester Stalone, James Wood, and many others whom no film or producers could ever bring together. The American's solidarity spirit turned them into a choir. Actually, choir is not the word. What you could hear was the heavy artillery of the American soul. What neither George W. Bush, nor Bill Clinton, nor Colin Powell could say without facing the risk of stumbling over words and sounds, was being heard in a great and unmistakable way in this charity concert. I don't know how it happened that all this obsessive singing of America didn't sound croaky, nationalist, or ostentatious! It made you green with envy because you weren't able to sing for your country without running the risk of being considered chauvinist, ridiculous, or suspected of who-knows-what mean interests. I watched the live broadcast and the rerun of its rerun for hours listening to the story of the guy who went down one hundred floors with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she was, or of the Californian hockey player, who fought with the terrorists and prevented the plane from hitting a target that would have killed other hundreds or thousands of people. How on earth were they able to sacrifice for their fellow humans? Imperceptibly, with every word and musical note, the memory of some turned into a modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone call, millions and millions of dollars were put in a collection aimed at rewarding not a man or a family, but a spirit which nothing can buy.
What on earth can unite the Americans in such a way? Their land? Their galloping history? Their economic power? Money? I tried for hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases which risk of sounding like commonplaces. I thought things over, but I reached only one conclusion.

Only freedom can work such miracles!
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Fischer - Spassky match

"I am the best player in the world and I am here to prove it." -- Bobby Fischer

Chess is like life. --- Boris Spassky

Chess is life. --- Bobby Fischer

Fischer 12.5-Spassky 8.5
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deficit commission 1 - Hope For A Big Check

I knew a young woman, whom we will call L H, in Denton, Texas in the early seventies. She worked for the International House of Pancakes and had to struggle to make ends meet. She had trouble keeping track of how many hours that she worked each week and was frequently surprised by the size of her pay check. On many occasions, when she was calculating how she would get by during the next week, she would say, "Well, I guess I'll just hope for a big check."
Last night on PBS nightly news hour, I watched Jeffrey Brown interview three people about the deficit reduction preliminary report. On the left was Damon Silvers from the AFL-CIO who said the proposal will kill jobs, that we just needed to tax the rich, and not cut anything. In the center was Maya MacGuineas of the New America Foundation who argued for the new proposal. On the right was Grover Norquist who said that we did not need the 1 trillion in increased taxes over 10 years. He said that if we would just increase the growth rate of the economy from 2% to 3%, then that extra 1% would cover the trillion and we wouldn't need a tax increase. Silvers then agreed with Norquist that, if we were just willing to have the economy grow at 3% a year instead of 2%, then that extra 1% would solve the problem. But, said Silvers, this document is not a starting point.
So if one thinks of the GDP as the country's check, then these two bird dogs on the extremes ended up agreeing that we should go with the growth approach. Don't do that belt-tightening thing.

Just hope for a big check.
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Historical note: Martin Luther

Martin Luther was born on this day in 1483. Luther was the father of the protestant reformation. He disputed the validity of "indulgences" in his most famous act of nailing his Niney-Five Theses to the church door in 1517. He also broke with the Catholic church on marriage by priest and translated the bible into German. He is a serious contender for Man of the Millenium.

Pelosi

Has anyone suggested that Nancy Pelosi may have indicated she will seek the position of Minority Leader in January only to maintain her power over the lame duck session?

Added 20101110 8 PM. Apparently not, since the selection is going to be Nov. 17th.

this post will self destruct on December 11.

the unionization of Walmart

How do you determine the value of work? Perhaps “the market” works pretty well at the top but I don’t think it does so well at the bottom. It is my understanding that the broad middle class that was built in this country in the 20th century was based on the unionized labor in the area of manufacturing and some services. What makes someone doing a very repetitive task on an assembly line more valuable than someone working in Walmart? There is nothing inherent in either of these activities that make one of them more valuable than the other. The difference is simple, it is economic power in the form of an organization.
Now comes globalization and the manufacturing worker’s job can be done by someone in another part of the world who will work for a lot less. We should of course continue to maintain whatever manufacturing where we can and a lot of other things in technology. The information people here are still doing great. But the income disparity in this country is growing and the question is where is one going to look for a way to rebuild the middle class. If you try to do it in manufacturing only, then, in most industries, the employees will not be able to receive any more (or not much more) than their counterparts in the developing world. It seems to me that we should look to the service workers. In particular, the ones who cannot be “outsourced”. The work these people do, would receive as much respect as those union workers did in the 50’s and 60’s if they had the power to get their share. Then those jobs would be just as desirable as the manufacturing jobs of an earlier era were. (Obviously the auto workers, like a lot of other people, went crazy later. Even there, though, it was the people in charge who hold the primary part of the responsibility.) That is why I favor the unionization of service workers in general and Walmart in particular.
When I say that I favor that result I, of course, mean that I accept the consequences. Only foolish liberals and small children would expect that the increased employee costs that would follow unionization of the employees would come from the profits of their employers. (I am quite confident that the 140 billion that the big boys got in bonuses alone last year will not be available for raises for any wage earners anywhere.) Of course, all of us would have to pay more for the stuff we buy from Walmart and elsewhere. I think that it would be worth it to help maintain the broad middle class that I think is necessary for the maintenance of our society.
I do not think that the country can sustain itself as a free society with a lot of very comfortable people (including the rich) on one hand and a broad collection of desperate poor on the other.
If the people who work hard for a living can’t make a life, then we have lost America.
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International economics

A friend suggested this story by Bill Moyers about the economic state of the Republic.

In connection with this I wonder:
It seems that no one discusses the question:
What did you think would happen when the rest of the world started to catch up with us?

That being said it does seem that the thing to do is recognize that we have an income disparity problem and decide how to deal with it.

I do not want to just take the money away from the well off and send it to the poor. That will make one side mad and undermine the confidence of the other.

I, for one, want to unionize the service workers industry, starting with walmart.
That could achieve the same result as the previous without the bad sideeffects.

Anwar al-Awlaki

Headline: A Yemeni judge ordered police Saturday to find a radical U.S.-born cleric "dead or alive" . The man in question, Anwar al-Awlaki, is already on the CIA's kill or capture list.

Those on the left will say Obama's rapproachement with Islam works.
Those on the right will say Bush's attack on the Taliban (the Afghan government which protected Al Queda) was noted by the Yemeni govt.

Perhaps the combo works well.
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Wilhelm Steinitz

Chess players are not known for their modesty.
Wilhelm Steinitz was the first official Chess Champion of the world.
Before one tournament he said: I have an advantage here because all of the other players have to play Steinitz.

FRP 1

Fiscal responsibility proposal
Dear well off Social Security recipient,
Last year your income was over $50,000, therefore you will not get a cost of living index increase in your SS payments for next year or thereafter as long as your income remains above $50,000 (adjusted for inflation).

If you would like a calculation that demonstrates that SS has “been bery, bery good to you” go to the website xxxx.

Thanks for playing,
Social Security Administration.

How hard would it be to create the website xxxx above? or Does there exist one that would let you put in the payments made to SS by you and your employer, subtract what you have taken out and give you a networth of what would be left right now and a projection of what kind of annuity that it would pay in the future?

Beatles

John was the smart one.
Paul was the cute one.
George was the quiet one.
And Ringo was the luckiest SOB that ever lived.

American

We do not have to allow them to slice and dice us into racial and ethnic categories for whatever their purposes are.

When a form asks for your race or ethnicity write in: American
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Where to now? 2

Some good advice for Obama from the YA Democrat Evan Bayh.

Where to now?

So if you accept, as I do, that the Keynesian requirements will not allow a tax increase immediately, then what can this divided government we have given ourselves do in the next two years that will contribute to fiscal responsibility.

Well they could work on some of the long term problems which would give we the people and the money people confidence in our long term seriousness.

Here are two examples that would be major contributions to solving the long term problem and involve very little immediate pain.

Make Medicare benefits taxable with the income from it devoted to Medicare payments. Those of us who have medium to high incomes would pay a medium to high tax on that. Our poor mothers living on SS would still not owe any tax. Phase it in if you have to to sell it.

Use the higher of the wage inflation index and consumer price index for SS increases for lower income people and the reverse for higher income people.
(The reason that you cannot just eliminate SS for the wealthy is that it would "make it into a welfare program" and reduce support for it.)

Another long term thing that would cost very little is to get serious about immigration. See Immigration 2 on 7/6/2010 for more on that.

The next steps would be harder. They would require some maturity in Congress so it is less likely. Have the Ds recognize that you cannot greatly increase government programs (like healthcare) without raising taxes and quit kidding us. Have the Rs realize that you cannot restore fiscal sanity without some tax increases and quit kidding us.

Once the recession is over, then you can construct a tax structure that
raises enough revenue to pay for whatever level of spending that you have chosen.