Winship on Inequality

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 12, 2009 at 3:57 pm

Scott Winship has an interesting, but slightly bizarre, post about inequality trends in the United States. He writes as if he’s debunking liberal claims about growing inequality. But, in fact, his post seems to me to support the liberal position. In particular, he pretends not to realize that an important school of right-of-center thought holds that there’s been no increase in inequality whatsoever. Winship shows that this is wrong.

In particular, he shows that while there’s room for disagreement about exactly how large the magnitude has been, there’s been a substantial increase in the share of national income going to the top one percent. The growth in inequality in the United States is often—usually by centrist sorts—exclusively attributed to college preparation issues or graduation rates, but the concentration in the top one percent is hard to understand in those terms. My read of this data, which I think is a pretty conventional liberal understanding, is that increased taxes on high-income individuals can make most people better off by either paying for more and better public services or else reducing the need to cut Medicare benefits in the future.

At any rate, Winship is very good with numbers but always seems overwhelmingly more interested in annoying liberals than in rectifying social problems. But what he’s shown here is that even a pretty serious effort to debunk the Pittkey-Saez inequality data that liberals like to cite shows that their main conclusions are pretty unassailable. There’s a separate issue of should we care (Will Wilkinson makes the case that we shouldn’t here) or should we care as much as some liberal say we should. But the basic facts seem pretty clear.

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Politics

Why Are Hawkish Lawmakers Willing To Pay For An Escalation Of The War But Not For Health Care?

By Zaid Jilani on Nov 12, 2009 at 3:45 pm

lolieberman In recent days, heated policy discussions in Washington have largely focused on two topics: a possible escalation of the war in Afghanistan and health care legislation. Both a troop escalation and health care legislation carry significant price tags: roughly $100 billion and $80-$100 billion a year respectively. (It should be noted that health care reform, unlike a troop surge, would cut the deficit.)

In his New York Times column today, columnist Nicholas Kristof asks why hawks claim health reform is “fiscally irresponsible” while enthusiastically supporting a troop surge in Afghanistan, given the fact that fixing our broken health care system is, unlike a troop surge, essential to the health and well-being of Americans:

The health care legislation pays for itself, according to the Congressional Budget Office, while the deployment in Afghanistan is unfinanced and will raise our budget deficits and undermine our long-term economic security.

So doesn’t it seem odd to hear hawks say that health reform is fiscally irresponsible, while in the next breath they cheer a larger deployment of troops in Afghanistan?

Meanwhile, lack of health insurance kills about 45,000 Americans a year, according to a Harvard study released in September. So which is the greater danger to our homeland security, the Taliban or our dysfunctional insurance system?

Indeed, hawkish legislators have lined up to both demand a costly surge in U.S. troops in Afghanistan while at the same time claiming that deficit-cutting health care legislation would simply be too expensive:

– Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) has called for providing the “resources [needed]” for a “significant increase in U.S. forces” while warning that he is “really worried about what [health care reform] would do to the deficit.” [9/13/09, 10/26/09]

– Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has complained that passing health care legislation would “expand government spending even more,” while also boasting of his Republican caucus’s “broad support” for any troop increase in Afghanistan. [10/21/09, 10/11/09]

– Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) wrote a letter to President Obama stating that we “urgently need more resources” in Afghanistan, “including more combat troops,” while at the same time claiming that passing health care legislation would be tantamount to “generational theft” that would run up “unconscionable and unsustainable deficits.” [11/10/09, 8/27/09]

Kristof’s question bears answering. Why is it that hawkish lawmakers are so willing to spend such enormous resources in both lives and treasure on a troop surge in Afghanistan that is increasingly opposed by Americans and Afghans, but are so quick to bark at the price tag of health care legislation that could save the lives of the 45,000 Americans who die every year because they don’t have access to health care? As Glenn Greenwald notes, “Urging that more Americans be sent into endless war paid for with endless debt, while yawning and lazily waving away with boredom the hordes outside dying for lack of health care coverage, is one of the most repugnant images one can imagine.”

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Health

Is Raising The Payroll Tax The Best Way To Fund Health Care Reform?

By Igor Volsky on Nov 12, 2009 at 3:23 pm

Harry_Reid1 The Associated Press is reporting that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) plans to increase the payroll tax used to fund Medicare to help pay for health care reform. “Current law sets the tax at 1.45 percent of income, an amount matched by employers.”

“The increase would apply only to the portion of income above $250,000 a year, so it would be limited to relatively high earners. And the details — including how big the hike might be — remain unclear.” The payroll tax may supplant the Senate bill’s excise tax on so-called Cadillac health care plans, which has proven unpopular with labor and the insurance industry.

The payroll increase is also quite different than the approach in the House, where Democrats passed a bill to place a 5.4% surtax on families with incomes over $500,000. Below is a comparison table of the options:

Payroll Tax On Those Earning More Than $250K

5.4% Surtax On Families w/ Incomes Over $500K

40% Excise Tax On Insurers That Offer ‘Cadillac’ Health Plans’

- Only affects high wage earners but does not force Americans with higher investment income to contribute.

- Raises less money than surtax or excise tax because it effects fewer individuals, taxes a smaller amount of money at a lower percentage.

- Since businesses make a matching contribution, they too would contribute to reforming the health care system — reforms they would benefit from.

- A safe political approach, since the payroll tax is widely accepted by economists and the public.

- Progressive. The more money you make, the more you pay in taxes.

- Tax is inclusive of investor income.

- Often seen as a way to “roll back” the Bush tax cuts, which disproportionately benefited the rich.

- Can raise large amounts of money without discouraging economic activity.

- Invests new money in the system without reducing existing waste.

- Taxing insurers for providing costly plans, while excluding older Americans and those in high risk professions, would slow the rate of health care spending.

- Produces savings that rise over time at least as fast as the costs of providing health insurance to those now uninsured.

- Over 80 percent of the revenue generated would come not from the tax on insurance premiums itself, but from income and payroll tax revenue on the tens of billions of dollars of higher wages that workers would receive.

- By receiving higher wages and paying somewhat more in payroll taxes, most affected workers would qualify for higher Social Security payments when they retire.

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Culture

Firing Byron Scott

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 12, 2009 at 3:14 pm

200px-Chris_Paul

It’s hard to see how firing Byron Scott is supposed to solve the New Orleans Hornets’ problems. Looking at them over the summer, they were getting ready to go to war with Chris Paul, the best point guard in the league and arguably the best overall player. He was backed up by Emeka Okafor, who’s very good and a totally plausible second-best guy on a good team. David West is fine. Posey was fine, too, but a bit past his prime. But Peja’s no good anymore. And yet he’s playing 25 minutes per game because who else is going to play? Devin Brown? Darius Songaila? When Okafor comes out, he’s backed up by Hilton Armstrong.

There’s just way too many terrible players on this team. Paul, Okafor, and a bunch of average guys could make the playoffs. But these are not average guys. Morris Peterson is shooting .341 from the field and .269 from three point land.

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Media

Lou Dobbs Accuses ThinkProgress Of Conspiring With The White House To Carry Out ‘Insidious And Sordid Attacks’

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Nov 12, 2009 at 2:39 pm

15_dobbs_lgl Last night, CNN anchor Lou Dobbs abruptly announced that he was leaving the network, effective immediately. TPM notes that in the weeks preceding his departure, Dobbs told GQ that the White House had been conspiring with a number of groups, including ThinkProgress, to wage “insidious and sordid attacks” against him with the goal of intimidating him and his former network:

GQ: That was my next question. Have you heard from the administration?

LD: Of course I have. Sure. Without question. They are coordinating with a number of groups, including the Center for American Progress. The usual suspects. To carry out constant and absolutely insidious and sordid attacks on me. And the reason they’re doing so, I’m the leading independent voice, and I am critical on their policies and intent, on unconditional amnesty, and leaving the borders and ports unsecure. They cannot, they’re. . .

GQ: They’re afraid of that point of view? They don’t think their point of view will carry against…

LD: Apparently not. Otherwise why would you do such a thing? But I will not be intimidated, and I understand that. Therefore they’re trying to intimidate my network and my owners.

For the record, neither ThinkProgress nor its parent organization, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, collaborated with the White House on our Dobbs coverage. However, Dobbs’ paranoid remarks did come around the same time ThinkProgress began promoting the efforts of progressive activists who were leading the Drop Dobbs, Tell CNN Enough Is Enough, and Basta Dobbs campaigns aimed at pressuring CNN to hold Dobbs to journalistic standards.

ThinkProgress has always focused on media accountability. Throughout the years, Dobbs has repeatedly left himself wide-open to legitimate criticism, not baseless attacks. Some recent examples:

– This summer, ThinkProgress reported that Dobbs had joined the birther movement and claimed President Obama might be an undocumented immigrant.

– The Wonk Room reported that the Lou Dobbs Show was promoting the myth that “people who break immigration laws” will be “rewarded” with free health care coverage.

– Shortly after we noted that Fox News’ John Stossel and Glenn Beck openly criticized Dobbs’ anti-immigrant “rants,” Dobbs proceeded to rip Stossel as a “self-important ass” with his “own brand of myopic idiocy.”

– ThinkProgress documented Dobbs slamming the “vile stupidity and ignorance” of “annoying” Geraldo Rivera, who had also denounced Dobbs’ immigration tirades.

– Most recently, Dobbs claimed that “ethnocentric interest groups” and Rivera himself were to blame for gun shots fired at his house. ThinkProgress called up the New Jersey State Police and broke the news that the shooting more likely involved a hunter’s stray bullet.

The efforts to get Dobbs off the air were not one-sided. Scott Stanzel, who used to work in President Bush’s communications shop, applauded the decision today in a statement to Politico: “I will not miss Lou Dobbs, his show or his ‘advocacy journalism.’ In recent years, the blurring of the lines between opinion and news reporting has damaged the credibility of mainstream reporters and news organizations. It’s refreshing to see CNN make a decision to fill the Dobbs slot with a respected and accomplished hard news journalist like John King. Maybe there is hope for the news business after all.”

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Yglesias

Cyberwar vs Cyberintelligence

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 12, 2009 at 2:30 pm

300px-Minuteman3launch 1

Ellen Nakashima and John Pomfret have an interesting article on China’s exploration of internet-based national security capabilities. But one unfortunate aspect of it is a tendency to run together intelligence activities with warfighting activities.

They open, for example, with the fact that the Chinese government appears to have intercepted confidential emails from the McCain and Obama campaigns and then write this:

American presidential campaigns are not the only targets. China is significantly boosting its capabilities in cyberspace as a way to gather intelligence and, in the event of war, hit the U.S. government in a weak spot, U.S. officials and experts say. Outgunned and outspent in terms of traditional military hardware, China apparently hopes that by concentrating on holes in the U.S. security architecture — its communications and spy satellites and its vast computer networks — it will collect intelligence that could help it counter the imbalance.

“In the event of war” both the United States and China are equipped with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads. When the PRC already has the ability to destroy Los Angeles, worrying that in the future they may add the ability to read our email doesn’t make a ton of sense. By contrast, the ability to read email is a perfectly useful peacetime capability for a government that’s perhaps interested in what people’s emails say. But this is more or less on a par with longstanding signals intelligence as practiced by all majors countries—it’s not some kind of new superweapon that neutralizes our considerable military superiority.

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Alyssa

Foxy Lady

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Nov 12, 2009 at 2:27 pm

I think the only thing it’s really possible to take away from the New York Times Magazine profile of Megan Fox is that Lynn Hirschberg is very, very good at interviewing difficult subjects. It’s a relief that Hirschberg is very frank about Fox’s lack of talent–it’s a strikingly blunt judgement for a profile for which the main character has clearly cooperated. She’s also very frank about how constructed Fox’s public persona is, and how badly Fox misjudges her efforts sometimes:

It’s hard to see how Fox’s most recent controversy can be construed as humorous. In an interview in the September issue of Wonderland, a British style magazine, Fox was asked the innocuous question “What are your most favorite and least favorite things about working with Michael Bay?” She never elaborated on the positives; instead Fox compared him to the power-mad dictators Napoleon and Hitler and claimed he was “a nightmare to work for.”

It’s a substantially imperfect piece, but it works, ultimately, as a piece of media criticism. I wish writers would really tear into stars and how they manage their public images more. And I wonder if Hirschberg could do this with Fox in a way she couldn’t do with an actress or actor of a) more proven talent, b) more proven box office, c) a less absurdist, sexualized appeal. But I think it’s effective and worthwhile to dismantle the junk actors feed us, and that magazine editors (and by extension we) ask them to sell us.

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Politics

E.J. Dionne: Democrats should ‘learn to live’ with leaving women behind on health care.

By Amanda Terkel on Nov 12, 2009 at 2:08 pm

In his Washington Post column today, E.J. Dionne claimed that pro-choice lawmakers and advocates are overstating how detrimental the Stupak amendment would be to women’s access to abortion:

The Michigan Democrat’s measure — passed 240 to 194, with 64 Democrats voting yes — would prohibit abortion coverage in the public option and bar any federal subsidies for plans that included abortion purchased on the new insurance exchanges. [...]

Whatever else is true, Stupak’s amendment is unlikely to have a significant effect on the availability of abortion. And most abortions are not paid for through health insurance. The Guttmacher Institute, for example, reported that only 13 percent of abortions in 2001 were directly billed by providers to insurance companies — although the institute has cautioned that the proportion of women whose abortions were covered by insurance could be higher because the figure did not include those “who obtain reimbursement from their insurance company themselves.”

But as Igor Volsky explains, the actual language of Stupak’s amendment goes well beyond just abortion plans purchased on the exchange. Since federal dollars will also be going to small and large businesses to cover their employees’ health care, a “strict interpretation of the amendment could also restrict abortion coverage in the employer market.” The Guttmacher Institute also published a statement yesterday making clear why saying that only 13 percent of abortions in 2001 were “directly billed by providers to insurance companies” is misleading.

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Yglesias

Soviet Ink Spots

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 12, 2009 at 1:46 pm

I don’t think I agree with the analytical conclusions of this item from the Ghosts of Alexander blog assessing the prospects for “A Hybrid Rumsfeld/Soviet Strategy for Afghanistan.” But it’s worth reading, and this map, originally from Gilles Dorronsoro’s Revolution Unending: Afghanistan, 1979 to the Present is very interesting in light of apparently ongoing disagreement in policy circles about how many population centers you really need to control to maintain a basic grip on Afghanistan. It shows what portions of Soviet-occupied Afghanistan were under effective government control:

“]

The basic strategy reads pretty clearly off the map. It’s easier to hold cities than the countryside. So you try to put together a string of urbanized areas that leaves you in control of the main ring road through the country, plus via Jalalabad and Kunduz some key routes to the border. But the Soviets couldn’t quite make this work, and some serious portions of the road network remained out of their grasp.

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Economy

‘Fiscal Peril’: State Budget Crises Could Lead To 900,000 Lost Jobs Next Year

By Pat Garofalo on Nov 12, 2009 at 1:29 pm

Back during the stimulus debate, one of the items that was pared back in order to get the overall package under an arbitrary $800 billion price tag was fiscal aid to states and local governments. $40 billion that would have gone to help states weather the economic downturn was lopped off of the bill to placate moderate senators.

As it turns out — and as many economists said at the time — this was not a very good idea. A new report from the Pew Center on the States warns of “fiscal peril” in 10 states which, if unaddressed, will hamper the nation’s economic recovery:

These states’ budget troubles can have dramatic consequences for their residents: higher taxes, layoffs or furloughs of state workers, longer waits for public services, more crowded classrooms, higher college tuition and less support for the poor or unemployed. But they also pose challenges for the country as a whole. The 10 states account for more than a third of America’s population and economic output. And actions taken by state governments to balance their budgets — such as tax increases and drastic spending cuts — can slow down the nation’s economic recovery.

“The problems are evident from coast to coast,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com. “Without more help to state and local governments, the resulting budget cuts will become a very significant drag on the economy.” The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that state budget shortfalls could mean that nearly a million jobs to disappear in the next year:

Presuming they will get no more fiscal relief, states will have to take steps to eliminate deficits for state fiscal year 2011 that will likely take nearly a full percentage point off the Gross Domestic Product. That, in turn, could cost the economy 900,000 jobs next year…Deficits for the current state fiscal year, not all of which states have closed, total more than 25 percent of state general fund budgets, making these the largest shortfalls on record.

As Derek Thompson wrote, those protesting more state aid “must recognize what that entails: hundreds of thousands of state employees joining the ranks of unemployment, and unemployment benefits. Q3 was great, but this thing isn’t close to being over.” And these employees are teachers, police officers, and health care workers — not the kind of employees that it’s easy to make do with less of.

The administration announced today that it is planning a “jobs summit” for December, with Obama calling high unemployment one of the administration’s “great challenges.” If the administration is serious about policies aimed at stemming job loss, more aid to states should certainly be on the table.

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