I don't think we need to bring tax revenues up to Norway levels. But ... this is why I don't trust deficit-reduction plans that involve huge tax cuts. (I could see rate cuts as part of a tax reform package that eliminated loopholes, but Paul Ryan's plan seems aimed more at cutting revenues to government.)
Ben and I tackle the debt ceiling vote in our newest Scripps column
When you're out driving with your family and see a stop sign ahead, how do you usually handle the situation? Do you wait until the very last second, then slam on the breaks -- hurtling your passengers forward against their seat belts and causing bruised ribs and bloody noses, along with no small amount of unnecessary alarm? Do you ignore the stop sign altogether and drive right on through, oblivious to crossing traffic?
If you're a halfway decent driver, you do neither of these things. You try to slow down gently and calmly before coming to a full stop -- knowing that the panic-driven way of halting might be just as injurious as plunging through the intersection. This, roughly, is the situation we face with the debt ceiling.
Simply put, if the feds try to completely slam the breaks on federal spending now, we'll end up in a fair amount of pain. Under one scenario, America would simply stop making interest payments to China and its other creditors -- destroying our country's worldwide economic leadership, most likely never to be regained. In the other scenario, interest payments would continue and all other programs would be hollowed out immediately.
That might sound good in some Tea Party scenarios, but the sudden loss of funding and thousands of federal jobs would upend the recovery.
To throw another metaphor on the pile: This wouldn't be ripping off a Band-Aid quickly -- it would be re-opening the wound. We don't need that.
We also don't need to pile up ever-more exorbitant amounts of debt endlessly into the future -- neither Democrats nor Republicans believe that. Big changes are coming to the federal budget. They should happen in an orderly fashion. Refusing to raise the debt ceiling at this point wouldn't be orderly, but it would be incredibly destructive.
Ben, on the other hand, advocates "holding the line." Read the full column for his take.
Ben and I tackle the debt ceiling vote in our newest Scripps column
When you're out driving with your family and see a stop sign ahead, how do you usually handle the situation? Do you wait until the very last second, then slam on the breaks -- hurtling your passengers forward against their seat belts and causing bruised ribs and bloody noses, along with no small amount of unnecessary alarm? Do you ignore the stop sign altogether and drive right on through, oblivious to crossing traffic?
If you're a halfway decent driver, you do neither of these things. You try to slow down gently and calmly before coming to a full stop -- knowing that the panic-driven way of halting might be just as injurious as plunging through the intersection. This, roughly, is the situation we face with the debt ceiling.
Simply put, if the feds try to completely slam the breaks on federal spending now, we'll end up in a fair amount of pain. Under one scenario, America would simply stop making interest payments to China and its other creditors -- destroying our country's worldwide economic leadership, most likely never to be regained. In the other scenario, interest payments would continue and all other programs would be hollowed out immediately.
That might sound good in some Tea Party scenarios, but the sudden loss of funding and thousands of federal jobs would upend the recovery.
To throw another metaphor on the pile: This wouldn't be ripping off a Band-Aid quickly -- it would be re-opening the wound. We don't need that.
We also don't need to pile up ever-more exorbitant amounts of debt endlessly into the future -- neither Democrats nor Republicans believe that. Big changes are coming to the federal budget. They should happen in an orderly fashion. Refusing to raise the debt ceiling at this point wouldn't be orderly, but it would be incredibly destructive.
Ben, on the other hand, advocates "holding the line." Read the full column for his take.
With Tax Day fast approaching and deficit reduction all the rage, one fact deserves significant attention: the wealthy are enjoying the some of the lowest taxes in generations. The Figure shows the average tax rate in 1979, 1992, and 2007, as well as the tax rate for the top 1% of households, and the top 400 households (who have an average annual income of nearly $350 million). Since 1979, the country’s overall average tax rate—the share of income paid in taxes—has fallen slightly, but for those at the top of the earnings ladder this share has fallen dramatically.
It may not be the case that we can solve all our problems by increasing taxes on the wealthy. But it's also not the case that the wealthy are stumbling under the weight of an overbearing tax burden in the United States, either.
Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw says he’s feeling the effects of numerous concussions sustained during his NFL career.
Bradshaw, a 62-year-old Shreveport, La., native, says he has been having short-term memory loss as well as the loss of hand-eye coordination. He also said he is undergoing rehabilitation for those ailments.
“I forgot the numbers. It’s pretty staggering,” Bradshaw said. “If you play in the NFL and start for 10 years, it’s not good. It is not good.”
There is part of me here that says: "So what?" Coal miners, for example, see their lives shortened pretty regularly by the work they do, but I'm not going without electricity. So if Terry Bradshaw finds himself harmed by the same work that made him rich and famous, who am I to complain?
The difference here, of course, is that electricity is a vital and necessary component of modern life. We can't really live without it. Terry Bradshaw scrambled his brain ... so we could be entertained. Me? I can easily find something else to do on Sunday afternoons that doesn't involve watching men sacrifice their mental capacities and good health for my amusement.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said in a speech on the floor Tuesday that “too often, it seems, Democrats in Washington claim to be interested in helping those in need, when what they really seek is to protect big government.”
I hear this a lot from my conservative friends, and I guess my question is: To what end? Why would we love big government if not as an ends to helping those in need?
Conservatives value small government for its own sake--they believe smaller government produces more liberty. I think that's an insight worth considering, frankly. But some of my conservative friends (like Mitch McConnell above) seem to then assume the inverse is true: Liberals want Big Government because, well, we really love Big Government.
It doesn't really make sense. The truth is that lots of liberals really do want to help the less-fortunate, and see government programs and regulation as the best way to do so. There's nothing tricky about it, no love of government for government's sake.
They want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors each to pay $6,000 more in health costs. That’s not right. And it’s not going to happen as long as I’m President.
If you don't believe government should be in the business of defraying health costs for the elderly, this probably doesn't move you. I've got to think there are more than a few independent voters out there who would agree with the president.
But as far back as the 1980s, America started amassing debt at more alarming levels, and our leaders began to realize that a larger challenge was on the horizon. They knew that eventually, the Baby Boom generation would retire, which meant a much bigger portion of our citizens would be relying on programs like Medicare, Social Security, and possibly Medicaid. Like parents with young children who know they have to start saving for the college years, America had to start borrowing less and saving more to prepare for the retirement of an entire generation.
Still reading my way through Obama's speech, but it's worth noting that the long-term deficit problem we have today didn't start with Social Security back in the Roosevelt era or Medicaid back in the LBJ years. It started in the 1980s...roughly the same time we started getting a generation of politicians who told us we shouldn't have to pay for the government we get. As I said in the Scripps column last week, the deficit isn't just a spending problem—it's a paying problem.
The total number of job openings in February was 3.1 million, and the total number of unemployed workers was 13.7 million (unemployment is from the Current Population Survey). The ratio of unemployed workers to job openings was 4.4-to-1 in February, a substantial improvement from the revised January ratio of 5.1-to-1. However, February marks 26 months that the “job-seeker’s ratio” has been substantially above the 4-to-1 ratio. A job seeker’s ratio of 4-to-1 means that for 3 out of 4 unemployed workers, there simply are no jobs.
The People’s Budget would finance $1.7 trillion worth of public investment over the next decade, most of which is front-loaded over the next five years. The budget would strengthen Social Security by lifting the cap on taxable earnings. The budget also would accrue health savings of $308 billion over the next decade, primarily by creating a public option for health insurance and negotiating prescription drug prices for Medicare Part D.
The budget would reduce conventional and strategic military forces, for savings of $692 billion and end all emergency war supplemental appropriations for savings of $1.6 trillion. Finally, individual and corporate tax reform would ensure sufficient revenue to cover federal outlays by the end of the decade.
We have an au pair from France, and she recently filled up our minivan and gave me a bill for $70,” said Melanie Janin, a mother of three from Bethesda. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’
Democrats who believe in offensive conspiracy-minded myths are hounded from office.* Republicans who believe in offensive conspiracy-minded myths are considered major presidential contenders.
*And good riddance.
If different occupations don’t explain the pay gap, might it be caused by women’s decisions to work less outside the home in order to care for their children? Researchers have found that even when differences in work experience, education, age, and occupation are held constant, women continue to earn less. In fact, research by Columbia University social work professor Jane Waldfogel reveals that mothers receive a 4 percent wage penalty for the first child and a 12 percent penalty for each additional child. In contrast, University of Washington economists Shelly Lundberg and Elaina Rose find that men’s wages increase 9 percent with the birth of their first child. One possible explanations sociologists offer is that, upon parenthood, men are perceived as more committed to their work and women less.
My conservative friends shrug off the pay gap as being a result of the different choices men and women tend to make: Women stay home with kids for at least a little while, the notion goes, so they tend to not keep pace with their male peers. The evidence seems to indicate that women who make the exact same choices as their male peers still lose out. Thank goodness for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, one of the few unambiguously good things the Obama Administration has accomplished.
Perhaps I just lack the mentality of a true winner, but there's something weird to me about the way this New York Times story is framed:
The United States continues to lag other nations in its use of computing and communications technology, according to an annual study issued Tuesday by the World Economic Forum.
That's awful! We need to win the future and build a bridge to the 21st century! Otherwise our kids will someday play with their iPads while more forward-thinking countries use personal holograms in the classroom! Oh the humanity!
For the second consecutive year, the United States finished fifth in the study’s comparison of 138 countries that make up 98.8 percent of the world’s total gross domestic product. Sweden was first, followed by Singapore, Finland and Switzerland.
Wait. What? We're No. 5? Out of 138 countries? That puts us in the top 3.6 percent of nations? And we're much, much, much bigger than the nations ahead of us—meaning their higher ranking might be partly the result of the ease of organizing and wiring up smaller communities than big, continent-spanning countries with big, continent-spanning populations?
USA! USA! USA!
Now, it's true that the Times points out some of America's weaknesses in the ranking: "For example, it ranked 76th in the rate of mobile phone subscriptions, 48th in low-cost access to business phone lines and 24th in percentage of households with a personal computer — behind Bahrain, Singapore and Brunei, among others." Hey: Let's work on that stuff.
But it seems that in the big picture, the United States has actually done a pretty decent job of transitioning society into its current tech-centric incarnation. The nations we "lag" behind just don't face the same challenges of scale that we do. Are we so fixated on being No. 1 in all things that we can't see when we're actually doing a pretty good job?
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a longtime GOP leader in the Hawkeye State, tells National Review Online that he is open to hearing Donald Trump’s case for the presidency. But that’s where his enthusiasm ends. “I’ll listen to anybody,” he says, “but I wish that General Petraeus would get interested. I’ve only had one person in Iowa ask me about Donald Trump.”
Obviously, this is a long way from being a full-throated endorsement of Donald Trump on Grassley's part. But given that Donald Trump is a reality TV host who has lately been doubling- and tripling-down on "birther" accusations against President Obama, would it hurt Grassley to skip the politeness and say flatly: "This guy has no credibility"? Is he being overly polite, or is the Republican party that far gone these days that even the worst conspiracy-driven vanity candidates must be given a respectful hearing?
The numbers generally cited in support of this argument do not actually tell us much about what has happened to the incomes of wealthy households over time. That’s because the people who are in the top bracket today are not the people who were in the top bracket last year. There’s a good deal of socioeconomic mobility in the United States — more than you’d think. Our dear, dear friends at the IRS keep track of actual households (boy, do they ever!), and sometimes the Treasury publishes data about what has happened to them. For instance, among those who in 1996 were in the very highest income group isolated for study — the top 0.01 percent — 75 percent were in a lower income group by 2005. The median real income of super-rich households went down, not up. The rich got poorer. Among actual households, income grew proportionally more for those who started off in the low-income groups than those that began in high-income groups.
This piece appeared a day ago and I've been waiting to see a good blogospheric response to it. I'm still waiting. All the data I've looked at in recent months suggests that income mobility is as stagnant as wages in the lower quintile—and, in fact, what makes the income inequality problem a problem is that there's not much chance you're going to be able to work your way out of those lower quintiles.
But I'm not an economist: I rely on economists to make sense of the data for me. And I'd really like to know if Williamson's right or wrong about this, or if this information looks different within a larger picture. Anybody out there?
Started my iPod from the beginning of the song list this morning. There's 5,000 songs on there, so this project might take ... awhile. Here's the first 10 selections:
• "Abandon Love," by Drakkar Sauna.
• "Abigail, Belle of Kilronan," by Magnetic Fields.
• "About A Girl," by Nirvana.
• "About Face," by Grizzly Bear.
• "About Her," by Malcolm McLaren.
• "Abracadabra," by Judee Sill.
• "Absolutely Cuckoo," by Magnetic Fields.
• "Acapulco," by Neil Diamond.
• "Accidents Will Happen," by Elvis Costello & The Attractions.
• "Ach, Elslein, liebest Elslein," King's Singers.
"The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure."Just George Washington is all. Conor Friedersdorf notes: "So 218 years ago, the ratification of the Constitution having just occurred, the first president of the United States insisted in the face of raids on the homeland, and the virtual certainty of future attacks, that he couldn't commit to a military response without the permission of the United States Congress."
Since your new book, “The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons From Extraordinary Lives,” is about great advice, imagine that your boss, Les Moonves, called you on Christmas 2009 and said: “Charlie Sheen was just arrested for holding his wife at knife point. He has a history of this sort of behavior with women, but he makes a ton of money for the network.” What do you tell him?You know, this is inane bullshit. I wouldn't pick Katie Couric as one of the top five people I'd like to interview, but this is like if I asked Andrew Goldman--the interviewer--if he was less proud going to work at the New York Times because he once had Manny Ramirez as a colleague. After all, the Times owns a chunk of the Boston Red Sox, and Ramirez won the World Series MVP playing for the Red Sox, and Ramirez just retired after failing a test for performance-enhancing drugs. Why won't Andrew Goldman stick up for the integrity of the New York Times?!
Fire him.
Have you told him as much?
No. He hasn’t really sought my advice on Charlie Sheen. I hope what Charlie Sheen did wouldn’t be consistent with the values of this network. That’s probably an unrealistic response, but that’s my initial gut reaction. Luckily, that’s not my job.
Did you feel less proud going to work at CBS knowing that he was essentially a colleague?
I don’t really consider Charlie Sheen a colleague.
