finknottle

He might have been referring to SSI, which technically is a different program. As far as I know, you don't get SocSec if you have never worked and you are not a spouse or dependent of someone who has. But I venture that there are very very few people who have never worked at all. For the record, my beef with SocSec is not that I think people are taking home fat retirement checks without working much. I don't think they are. It is simply the idea that a program - a mandatory program - in which we must invest our money as individuals to be withdrawn at retirement as individuals is discriminatory in the rate of return given. One part of society is granted a higher rate of interest, while another gets zero.

Here's a footnote on SocSec: When you pay in, your employer matches you. Suppose you work for two companies - increasingly common these days. Maybe one is your own business. Suppose you fall below the cap in both at 60k, but together you are above it. The extra you paid in you get back on your income taxes. However, the excess matching money paid by the employers is kept by SocSec, not credited to you nor returned to the company that paid it. If it was your company, it can get pretty annoying.

Very much a Ponzi scheme. And like pyramid schemes on the verge of collapse, we see desparate attempts to keep an ever-increasing flow of money going into the system. We have to raise the cap on what people can pay in to the system... We have to expand our population, doubling it again...

This is the fault line between whether the program is a savings program or an entitlement. If one views it as a saving program whose objective is to have people pay for their own retirement, then stopping contributions at an arbitrary point is reasonable and fair - what a person gets back is supposed to be the money they put in, so what's the difference? But if one views it as a redistribution program, with benefits not tied to contributions, then of course the government would want people to contribute based on their entire income. Historically SocSec has been and continues to be sold as the former (complete with individualized statements mailed out every year detailing your contributions, and promises of what it will earn you in retirement), but treated in practice like the latter (a tax on income going into a general fund, out of which benefits are spread across the public). The result is that we have politicians talking about raising the limits to raise revenue, as if this were an income tax that rich people are unfairly avoiding.

It's a funny scam. SS started out billed as a savings program, but has become a redistributive entitlement program. The way it works is this: you contribute money and they keep track of when and how much - you can see it on the statement they send you once a year. They also give you a benefit estimate. What they don't do is explain how those benefits are calculated. They take what you contributed, adjust for inflation, and calculate interest - so it's a mandatory savings program to this point. But instead of using the same interest rate for everybody, they look at how much you have contributed and base the rate on that. Those who have contributed very little to SocSec over their lifetimes get one rate of return, maybe 5%. As you contribute more, the rate they use goes down. For those who have contributed the most, they actually use a negative rate of return! I too found it very difficult to look up - it isn't on the website. I think I found it in a congressional report a few years ago. The 5% figure may be a bit off, my memory is shaky, but I'm confident that the interest rate regresses to just below zero. In any event it explains why high-contributors want to privitize the system: the interest on their savings is shifted to those who contributed less. They would do better keeping their own money and putting it in the bank themselves.

Yes. Whether contractors should be potentially involved in fighting is a different and entirely fair argument. But we also have to recognize that the line is becoming increasingly blurred. Is facilities protection (ie rent-a-cop) appropriate? Few people realize that - going back decades - most of our embassies have hired local companies to guard the outer areas. The only difference is the nationality of the employee, local versus American. And bodyguards? We want to say no because of Iraq. But if ordinary diplomatic personnel need protective escorts in places like (say) Egypt or Indonesia, does that mean we want them driving around town with a detatchment of uniformed soldiers? That would be a diplomatic fiasco. But back to your point about expertise. There was a interesting passage in the Rolling Stone article underscoring this: Like it or not, the only way you can get that kind of technical expertise to relocate in country is with a services contract through a much-maligned defense contractor.

You can't hire a soldier for a specific mission - you take him on, he may do duty where you need him, but he will spend a lot of time doing other things like being rotated around, attending classes, and doing 'career development.' So if you need X extra people, you need to increase your serving force levels by some multiple of X. And if you need them suddenly and with experience, you may have a problem. You are not just paying a soldiers salary, you are also paying for many benefits that don't show up in his paycheck like training, health/dental/life insurance, PX subsidies, housing and shipping allowances. You can't release him when the mission is finished, you have him for at least his enlistment period. And when he finally separates from service, you are not done paying. There is the small matter of his college education, his pension, and his veterans benefits, for him and his survivors. With a contractor, you are paying a specified rate for specified service. When you are done with him, you are done paying. The move to contracting within the USG was driven by the realization that much of the budget is increasingly tied up in promised benefits. Increasing the size of the military by a few divisions (as was promised by Obama) will squeeze future military budgets without neccessarily providing us the deployment flexibility we need. While there is resentment, the perceived money issue is a red-herring. Non-military agencies are also out-sourcing, especially in things like IT, for the same reasons. Contract employees are cheaper in the long run, but regular employees see a fatter check up front and are outraged.

So if you claim Afgh is the central and all important front in the war against AQ; and you feel strongly enough about its leadership to buck policy and dismiss the current commander in the middle of his assignment; you appoint your own person instead of letting the Pentagon do it; you are absolved from taking responsibility for what that person does? Which personnel decisions should the president take responsibility for?

All this talk about various presidents' generals sidesteps the main issue: Who put them in charge? In most cases, it was the Dept Army/Pentagon. The military didn't saddle Obama with McCrystal. The Obama Administration hand-picked and promoted him to replace a wartime commander in the middle of his tour, against the SOP of the military, forcing McKiernan into retirement. This is a personnel decision that falls squarly at the feet of the White House. McCrystal was Obama's choice in what the President said was the critical theater. If McCrystal is an insubordinate buffoon, it say's something about the quality of Obama's team.

Let's not forget one thing: He isn't some random general who is totally out of line. He is Obama's General, though you won't hear the media reminding you of that. When Obama entered office, McKiernan was in charge. Three months into office the Obama administration made the extremely rare decision to replace a wartime commander before his tour was up, bypassing the Pentagon. They argued, as is their perogative, that they needed their hand-picked guy to execute the Presidents (original) plan. They chose McCrystal, promoted him to General, and let him loose. Their choice, and they went out of their way to do it. To me McCrystal is a reflection of the incompetance of White House leadership.

I'm curious. What if, after the dust settles and the investigations are complete, it turned out that BP wasn't at fault at all? What if it turned out that this was all because Halliburton knowingly used Velveeta instead of concrete? And the Coast Guard prevented BP from doing the things which were in hindsight the correct responses? Would Barton still be a slimeball?

What I'm hearing here on talk radio (and it isn't confirmed or universally accepted) is that the Redskins reached a verbal understanding with him that by accepting that bonus he would play anywhere he was asked to. That, so some commentators say, is why the Redskins are confident enough to talk about recouping some of the bonus. With his later failure to attend the recent mandatory camp, they now feel that they are on solid legal grounds.

Obama may or may not have personal animosity towards the UK. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt. What this all shows me is that the people he put in place - the one's who decided to return the bust, who thought an Ipod was an apprropriate gift for the Queen, and who got the Prime Minister a bunch of DVD's that can't be played on a European zone dvd player - are both clueless and incompetant.

In diplomacy, a loan can be seen as the same thing as a gift, if the consequences for refusing it are the same. After all, since when is diplomacy anything but silly games of protocol and appearance. Who stands where, who sits next to whom... Did Obama ask for or need a pencil holder made especially for this occasion from the timbers of the anti-slavery warship HMS Gannet, sister ship to the HMS Resolute whose timbers made a white house desk in use since 1880? No. Did the Queen need an Ipod with showtunes and Obama speeches? Or did Gordon brown need 25 Region 1 DVD's? No. And yet the exchange of gifts - or more precisely, misteps from the exchange of gifts - weighs heavily on popular attitudes. Even the children's gifts were a topic of discussion over there. The Obama girls got dresses and necklaces from trendy Uk shops and books autographed by Uk writers. The Brown boys received White House gift shop models of the Marine One helicoptor ($15 on Amazon). This is red meat for the tabloids looking to whip up anger.

Actually, the BP story has given it new legs. Both the bust and the embarrassingly thoughtless gifts given to the Queen and the Brown family are being served up as background in pieces calling into question how the Obama administration values the relationship.

It's not clear to me that people realize the difference between the survey questions and the background questions. The survey questions are the point, and they are the ones which need to be carefully selected. The background questions, things like race, religion, income, how often you shop at Wal-Mart, whether you a NASCAR fan, and yes - do you consider yourself a citizen of your city, country, or planet first and formost - are strictly background. Extra responses that might be of later interest. If you don't have an answer you want to give, you can choose 'don't know,' 'other,' or choose not answer it. They don't really care, that's not the information they were really after. How do you feel when they ask about race? Ambiguous, incomplete choices, with no clear rules for deciding your race. I guess you just answer what you identify with most, despite technically being a mix of everything, or don't answer at all. I can't see calling one retarded without calling the other it too. And yet, nearly every survey includes an ethnicity question for background. Taking another tack: would people here consider the idea of a standalone survey on peoples attitudes towards allegience inherently retarded? I would argue that in an era of globalization, it would be interesting to see the relative weights of identification with community, nationalism, and globalism, especially contrasted with race, religion, and class.

You find primary identification with a city, a country, or the planet puzzling? Most people have no problem identifying where they see their primary allegience. I would suggest that it is the outcome that you find retarded. The study is what it is: a bunch of straight-forward statements about economics. And a correlation of the answers with the accompanying background data. If you want to disagree with the "correct answers" to the eight statements, fine. I'm sure everybody here would enjoy your argument that companies with the largest market share are monopolies.

I read the original paper - fascinating. The study was intended to investigate the correlation between economic enlightenment and the level of education completed. There was no significant difference - the average was 3 wrong answers out of 8. But sifting the data this way and that led to many other interesting correlations: By self-described ideology, 5.26 Progressive 4.69 Liberal 3.67 Moderate 1.38 Very Conservative 1.38 Libertarian 1.30 Conservative By Party 5.88 Green 4.59 Democrat 3.02 Independent/Other 1.94 Constitution 1.61 Republican 1.26 Libertarian Voted for in the 2008 Election: 5.56 McKinney (G) 4.92 Nader (I) 4.61 Obama 1.60 McCain 1.56 Barr (L) By Race: 4.26 African American 3.30 Hispanic 3.10 Other 3.09 Arab American 2.95 White 2.58 Asian/Pacific By Religion: 4.04 Other 3.50 Jewish 3.29 Muslim 2.69 Catholic 2.40 Protestant 1.91 Atheist/Realist/Humanist Household Member in a Union: 3.58 Yes 2.84 No Resident of your City, America, or Planet Earth: 4.59 Planet Earth 2.87 Your City 2.24 America Do you consider yourself a member of the "Investor Class" 3.46 No 2.38 Yes How often do you shop at Wal-Mart? 4.24 Never 2.93 Couple of times a year 2.45 Few times a month 2.24 Every week

And that would have made a difference how? This was not a producing well. It was an exploratory well that when finished was to be plugged for later completion, when a second well would be dug. Sounds rather like your Canadian policy in action. The explosion and fire occured during the first exploratory digging. http://www.offshore-technology.com/projects/macondoprospect/

It was probably an argument over Al's record collection. (Nothing like a 25 year old reference...)

I found this interesting: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/m...g-saved-canada/ The gist of it is that Canada's banking system weathered the crisis largely undamaged, largely because they practice old-school requirements: higher capital reserves. 20% down payment, proof of income, and no federal push for home ownership. As a consequence, banks generally found lending more profitable, and engaged less in the bundling and selling of dubious loans. It goes on to say that the Obama administration has successfully resisted attempts in the financial regulation bill to follow the Canadian example, defeating such amendments on largely partisan votes. This seems to have flown under my radar. Is it essentially accurate?

You are being too kind to the EU. It has nothing to do with any 'special form of democracy.' In an expanded EU, Turkey would be the second largest member by population. It is large, (relatively) poor, and muslim. Many EU members simply don't want the free movement of Turks into their countries, which EU membership entails. The EU has been flipping Turkey the bird for the past 20 years, despite repeated moves to satisfy the objections of the moment. So the current Turkish administration has said 'enough' and reoriented its foreign policy to Russia and the Middle East.

Didn't mean to suggest that we need more of these people. I'll be the first to say that we need fewer lawyers - or more accurately, an environment in which fewer lawyers are required to navigate regulations and the law. My only point is that these are today's middle/upper middle class professions. The professions are thriving, and people having those skill sets are rewarded. We are not 'tapped out' on skilled jobs. Manufacturing is minimally profitable, and the skill sets required are low. Nobody is going to pay good salaries in that situation. So complaining about falling living standards for people trained for factory line work is a bit like bemoaning the falling incomes of retail cashiers. But your point about decent jobs for the masses is valid. The question is: is it realistic to imagine a uniformly high-end economy, in which everybody is skilled and doing valuable work? If not, what do we do about the great unwashed masses, who can't or won't train themselves for a modern knowledge-based economy? The trick is to strike the right balance between a harsh have/have not economy and the welfare state. We need to support everybody minimally, without disincentivizing the personal committment and choices needed to be a valuable worker in a highwage economy.

One of the reasons you don't see rugby stars switching to the NFL is, well, the same reason you don't see them going the other way. Switching sports is never a sure thing. Why would a star take the risk? A professional in either sport has fame and is already earning decent money. At best he can prove he can make it in both sports. More likely he will ride the bench somewhere earning the salary minimum. At worst he gets a career-ending injury fooling around in a sport he doesn't know. Can you see a Randy Moss taking a year off from the NFL just to see if he can make it as a wing for Ulster or Toulouse? Rugby and Football are both physical, high risk sports. We've seen one or two NFL players try to play the MLB or the NBA. As a vanity thing, those sports are pretty safe. But how many established NBA or MLB players have risked actual careers trying to make an NFL team?

Lower standard of living? No. What is needed is the realization that factory work is no longer a middle class occupation. If a person is training to be a laborer, then they will see fewer opportunities and declining standards of living. But programmers, scientists and engineers, accountants, medical professionals and lawyers - their salaries are more than holding their own. As are their industries. Anybody who forgoes real training in the belief that they can get a job in manufacturing has missed the last fifty years of history.