This post is through ranchero software's marsedit (from the same guys that have made the indispensable NetNewsWire 2.0 - If you've got a mac try it... My most used program next to Firefox.) It uses the old blogger API, so no headline support until ATOM API support comes in post 1.0. Consider the headline to be:

Hello Fall

And besides, it feels Autumnal this week.

Also, I love Dumbo (the area of downtown Brooklyn next to the Brooklyn & Manhattan Bridges. Washington St, just between the bridges and on down to the East River is amazing. It feels like a spanking new office building area, and yet is in between these massive old bridges, and cobblestones peek through the pavement. A starbucks is opening up (any coffee shop will do) and the area is blocks away from the best Pizza in the City (Grimaldi's - formerly Patsy's) and the A,C and F trains, which all cut underground to Manhattan, far faster than the trains (BDQMNR) that go over the Manhattan bridge. Of course, I can't afford it yet.

Kristof wrote a good piece in the nyt about gender equality becoming the battle of this century. I don't agree with him. I think Genetic Modification of animals and humans will become a far larger issue. I am inclined to wonder if the future ubermensch will also have gender equality issues.

The article talks about Pakistani judicial rape victim Mukhtaran Bibi who's trying to make an impact, despite the death threats of neighbors. You can send money here. The money will actually go to something better than first worlders careening around the third world in NGO SUVs.

The debates start tonight. I'm bracing myself to be very very depressed.

Also, who is coming this weekend? Brendan & Miriam? Caitlin & Cy yes I think. I'm going to make reservations for Milk & Honey tonight for sometime late tomorrow evening.

I'm on Book 5 of Sandman. Is it just me or does the dare I say novelty start wearing off about this point? (Back off... Gaiman is still Amazing...)

So there are strong economic arguments for privatizing social security. But those aren't the republican goals, as described below. I'm going to say this one last time (not likely): Republicans, conservative Democrats, and fellow travelers - Stop Ruining My Country.

Thank you. Bitches.

Are There Reasons to Be in Favor of Social Security Privatization?: "

Duncan Black writes:

Eschaton: The Case for "Privatizing" Part of Social Security: Actually, I don't think there is one. What would be the point? If you think reducing payroll taxes and/or guaranteed benefits in a way which adds up is a good idea then go ahead and advocate that policy. But, what possible good argument is there for a policy roughly like the ones which are floated by the Bushies (without details of course), which would cut payroll taxes by 2 percentage points, cut guaranteed future benefits, and then mandate that you save/invest that 2 percentage points of income. What's with the mandatory savings? If you want to cut benefits, fine. If you want to having all kinds of tax free savings instruments, which we already do, fine. But why force people to save? The only point of doing so is to ensure that people have a reasonable income base when they're of retirement age, but once you take the "insurance" part out of retirement insurance, then a mandatory saving/investment program doesn't achieve that.

I disagree. There are five reasons to be in favor of Social Security privatization. They are:

1. There are large-scale financial market failures which cause the equity premium to be *way* too high: the stock market does a lousy job at mobilizing society's risk-bearing capacity as applied to investment. Privatizing Social Security and mandating that such accounts be invested in stocks rather than holding the public Social Security Trust Fund in Treasury bonds is a powerful way to try to repair this market failure by boosting demand for equities
   
   
2. Too many households are myopic: they do not save enough. Households resist increases in Social Security taxes--they see no link between the taxes and their future benefits. But if Social Security were privatized so that households saw their Social Security contributions as their own, in the future there would be much less objection to upping the contribution rate--and so creating a real and more effective forced saving program to raise the national savings rate.
3. Prefunding Social Security is moral: it is unfair to make tomorrow's young bear the entire burden of financing the retirement of the baby-boom generation. But prefunding requires raising Social Security contributions and building up huge assets in the Social Security Trust Fund--enough assets to give the Managing Trustee of the Trust Fund effective voting control over corporate America. The Managing Trustee is the Secretary of the Treasury. Do we want the Secretary of the Treasury casting the deciding votes in every election for corporate boards of directors? No. Hence privatization is a necessary first step to create the possibility of doing the moral thing--making the boomers build up the assets needed so that they can shoulder a greater share of the burden of financing their own retirement.
   
   
4. We need to raise our national savings rate. But if we just raise Social Security taxes, Congress will treat these taxes as general revenue and spend them. Only by funneling Social Security contributions into some vehicle that Congressional representatives cannot interpret as a resource available to fund current spending can we raise the national savings rate. And private accounts are the best vehicle we can find to (a) accumulate contributions without (b) allowing Congressional representatives to seize them as resources available to fund current federal spending.
5. At present, your Social Security benefits are yours only by grace of Congress: Congress could cut them if it wished. But if your privatized Social Security account were *yours*, then it would be yours not by grace of Congress but by right of property: courts would stand ready to defend it against any casual attempt to cut or confiscate it.

The problem is that I cannot see any of these as a reason for George W. Bush to be in favor of Social Security privatization. (It does seem likely to me that (1) and (3) are Marty Feldstein's and Andrew Samwick's reasons for being strong advocates of privatization, and that (4) is Kent Smetters's reason for being a strong advocate of privatization. But their reasons aren't the administration's reasons, and hence whatever plan a second Bush administration might ultimately propose would be unlikely to be crafted to achieve goals (1), (3), or (4).

Why are other groups inside a second Bush administration likely to be in favor of Social Security privatization? What's in it for them? I can see three possibilities:

• Enormous fees for the mutual fund industry...
  
  
• Huge capital gains for current investors as stock prices rise in anticipation of the enormous flow of stock purchases by private accounts...
  
  
• Over time as the contribution rate to private accounts is upped and the resources to pay for the still public system fall, the finances of the public system get worse and worse as the relatively young place less and less reliance on it and more and more on their private accounts. Eventually the balance of political support tips--and the public system's benefits can be slashed and then the public system itself shut down.

I don't think the Bush administration itself knows why it is in favor of Social Security privatization. It only knows that it is.

Nevertheless, I accept Duncan Black's big point: most of the good arguments for privatization are simply not accessible to people on the right: they are inconsistent with their view of the world.

"

(Via Semi-Daily Journal.)