Category: philosophy & politics

In Europe “It’s the End of the World As We Know It”.

Europeans have boasted about their social model, with its generous vacations and early retirements, its national health care systems and extensive welfare benefits, contrasting it with the comparative harshness of American capitalism.

Europeans have benefited from low military spending, protected by NATO and the American nuclear umbrella. They have also translated higher taxes into a cradle-to-grave safety net. “The Europe that protects” is a slogan of the European Union. But all over Europe governments with big budgets, falling tax revenues and aging populations are experiencing rising deficits, with more bad news ahead.

With low growth, low birthrates and longer life expectancies, Europe can no longer afford its comfortable lifestyle, at least not without a period of austerity and significant changes. The countries are trying to reassure investors by cutting salaries, raising legal retirement ages, increasing work hours and reducing health benefits and pensions.

via Payback Time – Deficit Crisis Threatens Ample Benefits of European Life – NYTimes.com.

Man Is A Trader

What made Homo sapiens so special? Dr. Ridley argues in “The Rational Optimist,” that it wasn’t our big brain, because Neanderthals had a big brain, too. Nor was it our willingness to help one another, because apes and other social animals also had an instinct for reciprocity.

“At some point,” Dr. Ridley writes, “after millions of years of indulging in reciprocal back-scratching of gradually increasing intensity, one species, and one alone, stumbled upon an entirely different trick. Adam gave Oz an object in exchange for a different object.”

The evidence for this trick is in perforated seashells from more than 80,000 years ago that ended up far from the nearest coast, an indication that inlanders were bartering to get ornamental seashells from coastal dwellers. Unlike the contemporary Neanderthals, who apparently relied just on local resources, those modern humans could shop for imports.

via Findings – Doomsayers Beware, a Bright Future Beckons – NYTimes.com. Continue reading “Man Is A Trader”

For a solution to the euro crisis, look to the states

Although the 50 states share a currency and each sets its own spending and tax policies, state deficits remain very low. Even California has a deficit of only about 1 percent of the state’s GDP and total general obligation debt of less than 4 percent of state GDP. The basic reason for these small deficits is that each state’s constitution prohibits borrowing for operating purposes. States can issue debt to finance infrastructure but not salaries, services, transfer payments or other operating expenses.

In some states, these self-imposed restrictions go back to the 19th century, a time when excessive borrowing led to state defaults. Those states wanted to assure potential lenders that such excess borrowing would not happen again. Over time, all states adopted such rules to help make the bonds they issued for capital expenditures attractive to investors. Although the states’  balanced-budget rules differ in detail, with some using rainy-day funds to offset cyclical declines in revenue, they all succeed in preventing persistent operating deficits. If the EMU governments were to adopt similar constitutional rules, the interest rates on their bonds would fall.

via Martin Feldstein – For a solution to the euro crisis, look to the states.

When Will the Present Change the Mistakes of the Past?

The author outlines the post-depression social contract and the gradual breakdown of that model. In the private sector, an example would be the breakup of the AT&T phone monopoly, which opened up the Market to the introduction of cell phones and the internet. But not every industry rose to the International challenges of Globalization and hence the Detroit automotive debacle, brought-on by the recent near-depression. The author wonders what Crash will it take to get Governments to change from their WWII model. The recent close-call (assuming that the Sovereign Debt Crisis doesn’t unravel) has shocked many of the welfare-state proponents to face the unsustainability of their historical model.

American Challenges: The Blue Model Breaks Down – Walter Russell Mead’s Blog – The American Interest.

Relax, We’ll Be Fine

The U.S. is on the verge of a demographic, economic and social revival, built on its historic strengths. The U.S. has always been good at disruptive change. It’s always excelled at decentralized community-building. It’s always had that moral materialism that creates meaning-rich products. Surely a country with this much going for it is not going to wait around passively and let a rotten political culture drag it down.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Relax, We’ll Be Fine – NYTimes.com. Continue reading “Relax, We’ll Be Fine”

Federal pay ahead of private industry

Federal employees earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers in more than eight out of 10 occupations, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds.

Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors are among the wide range of jobs that get paid more on average in the federal government than in the private sector.

Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.

via Federal pay ahead of private industry – USATODAY.com.

What The Tea Party And Hippies Have In Common

About 40 years ago, a social movement arose to destroy the establishment. The people we loosely call the New Left wanted to take on The Man, return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution.

About 40 years ago, a social movement arose to destroy the establishment. The people we loosely call the New Left wanted to take on The Man, return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution.

via Op-Ed Columnist – The Wal-Mart Hippies – NYTimes.com. Continue reading “What The Tea Party And Hippies Have In Common”

How America Can Rise Again

Is America going to hell? After a year of economic calamity that many fear has sent us into irreversible decline, the author finds reassurance in the peculiarly American cycle of crisis and renewal, and in the continuing strength of the forces that have made the country great: our university system, our receptiveness to immigration, our culture of innovation. In most significant ways, the U.S. remains the envy of the world. But here’s the alarming problem: our governing system is old and broken and dysfunctional. Fixing it—without resorting to a constitutional convention or a coup—is the key to securing the nation’s future. – by James Fallows

via How America Can Rise Again – The Atlantic (January/February 2010).

The Real Rogue Of 2009: Levi Johnston

It’s unverifiable – but no less so than Palin’s autobiography. And compared with her bizarre, constantly changing stories and multiple lies about any number of empirically indisputable facts, Johnston’s monosyllabic yeses and nos and plain English eye-witness accounts that have never changed are like oases of sanity and calm.

When I got to meet Johnston, I asked him simply how he seemed so calm as a nineteen year old up against an international celebrity with millions of dollars and every pimp in the “publishing” and political industries trying to suck up to her. “Because I’m tellin’ the truth,” was his simple, and immediate answer.

I can’t know who’s telling the truth for sure. But after a decade of frauds enabled and abetted by political corruption and media cowardice, Palin might well be the biggest fraud of all, perpetrating a hoax so massive no one can quite see it. Perhaps the most memorable quote of the year came when Levi said quite simply, even after unloading all of the above:

“There are some things that I have that are huge. And I haven’t said them because I’m not gonna hurt her that way … I have things that can, you know — that would get her in trouble, and could hurt her. Will hurt her. But I’m not gonna go that far. You know, I mean, if I really wanted to hurt her, I could, very easily. But there’s — I’m not gonna do it. I’m not going that far.

Or as he also put it:

:She knows what I got on her.”

But the rest of us don’t.

Yet.

via The Real Rogue Of 2009: Levi Johnston – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

Bill Maher: New Rule: Smart President ≠ Smart Country

Just because a country elects a smart president doesn’t make it a smart country.  (Bill Maher then goes on and rants about polling examples of public ignorance. Reminds me of the “Jay Walking” interviews on the “Tonight Show”, often with College Students.)

Until we admit there are things we don’t know, we can’t even start asking the questions to find out. Until we admit that America can make a mistake, we can’t stop the next one. A smart guy named Chesterton once said: “My country, right or wrong is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying… It is like saying ‘My mother, drunk or sober.'” To which most Americans would respond: “Are you calling my mother a drunk?”

via Bill Maher: New Rule: Smart President ≠ Smart Country.